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ClassificationsGreek and Roman Art
Attributed (Greek, Apulian, active ca. 345 - 310 BCE)

Volute-Krater with Story of Melanippe

AAT Object Form/Functionvolute kraters
AAT Object TechniqueRed-figure
Place CreatedItaly, Europe
Dateca. 330-323 BCE
MediumCeramic
Credit LineLoaned by the Italian Republic/Concesso in prestito dalla Repubblica Italiana.
Dimensions31 11/16 x 15 5/8 in. (80.5 x 39.7 cm)
Object numberL2023.004.002
Label TextIt is possible that performances of a tragedy by the Athenian dramatist Euripides inspired the picture on this krater. His play Melanippe the Wise survives today only in fragments, but from an ancient summary of the plot we are able to reconstruct the story. Here, the drama unfolds in the lower register, with the protagonists named by inscriptions, while the gods look down from Olympus above.

According to myth, Melanippe bore twin sons to Poseidon while her father Aiolos was in exile. On orders from Poseidon, and anticipating her father's return, she exposed the children in a cow shed, where they were discovered by a shepherd and brought to her father and grandfather, Hellen. Thinking these to be "cow born monsters", they ordered the infants to be burned and instructed Melanippe to prepare the funeral shrouds. Through her powers of persuasion, however, Melanippe was able to convince her father that the children were not monsters, and their lives were thus spared.

At center, an elderly man, Boter (shepherd), emerges from an orchard carrying two newborns (note the pointed heads) wrapped in a blanket, which he presents to Hellen. At right, an old woman, Trophos (nurse), comforts the distressed heroine Melanippe. On the other side stands Aiolos, her father, who carries a scepter to denote his kingship. Behind him is Kretheus (Melanippe's half brother) who crowns a mare, possibly a reference to Melanippe's mother, Hippe. In the upper register, Poseidon, above Melanippe at right, gestures angrily to Aphrodite and Eros. Athena stands at the center, with Apollo and Artemis beyond.
Exhibition HistoryLe Peintre de Darius et son milieu, Musee d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva, Switzerland, 1986
MCCM Permanent Collection Galleries, 1994 - October 1997
The Art of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Michael C. Carlos Museum, November 8, 1997 - January 4, 1998
MCCM Permanent Collection Galleries, February 1998 - May 2004
MCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation, September 2004 - January 2011
Monsters, Demons, & Winged Beasts: Composite Creatures in the Ancient World, Michael C. Carlos Museum, February 5 - June 19, 2011
MCCM Permanent Collection Galleries, June 20, 2011 - August 26, 2013
MCCM Permanent Collection Galleries, October 2, 2013 - May 2014
Poseidon and the Sea: Myth, Cult, and Daily Life, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida, June - November 30, 2014
MCCM Permanent Collection Galleries, February 2, 2015 - Present
Published ReferencesAlexander Cambitoglou, et al., Le peintre de Darius et son milieu: vases grecques d'Italie meridionale (Geneve: Association Hellas et Roma, 1986), 190-199.
Paolo Moreno, Pittura greca: da Polignoto ad Apelle (Milano: Mondadori, 1987), 176-177, figure 172.
Paolo Enrico, "C. Aellen, Alexander Cambitoglou, and J.Chamay, Le peintre de Darius et son milieu: vases grecs de l'Italie meridionale, Hellas et Roma, IV, Geneva 1986," Bollettino d'Arte 47 (1988): 91-94, plate 24.
Karl Scheflold and Franz Jung, Die Urkonige, Perseus, Bellerophon, Herakles, und Theseus in der klassischen und hellenistischen Kunst (Munich: Hirmer, 1988), 47.
A.D.Trendall, Red Figure Vases of South Italy and Sicily: A Handbook (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1989), 261, figure 210.
Anneliese Kossatz-Deissmann, "Die Ubergrabe des Dionysoskindes in der Unteritalischen Vasenmalere," in Eumousia: Ceramic and Iconographic Studies in Honour of Alexander Cambitoglou, ed. Alexander Cambitoglou et al. (Sydney: Meditarch, 1990), 203-10.
MCCM Newsletter, Spring 1994.
Michael C. Carlos Museum Handbook (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 1996), 62.
Jenifer Neils and John H. Oakley, et al. Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 179, figure 18.
MCCM Newsletter, December 2004 - February 2005.
Jasper Gaunt, "New Galleries of Greek & Roman Art at Emory University: The Michael C. Carlos Museum," Minerva 16 (2005): 13-17.
Veronique Dasen, Jumeaux, jumelles dans l'antiquite Grecque et Romaine (Kilchberg: Akanthus, 2005), cover.
Oliver Taplin, Pots & Plays: Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-Painting of the Fourth Century B.C. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007), 68, 193-96.
Thomas Morard, Horizontalite et Verticalite: Le bandeau humain et le bandeau divin chez le Peintre de Darius (Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 2009), 181, Cat. 40, planche 34.
John H. Oakley, "Child Heroes in Greek Art," in Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece, ed. Sabine Albersmeier (Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, 2009), 71.
John H. Oakley, "State of the Discipline: Greek Vase Painting," American Journal of Archaeology 113 (2009): 619, figure 18.
Michael C. Carlos Museum: Highlights of the Collections (Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2011), 51.
Peter Bing, "Afterlives of A Tragic Poet: Anecdote, Image and Hypothesis in the Hellenistic Reception of Euripides," Antike und Abendland 57 (2011): 1-17.
Jacques Chamay, "La vie des enfants dans la Grece antique," in Antiquité: 180 articles de presse (Geneva: Slatkine, 2014), 90-92.
Judith Evans Grubbs, et al., The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), cover image.
Seth D. Pevnick, et al., Poseidon and the Sea: Myth, Cult, and Daily Life (Tampa: Tampa Museum of Art in association with D. Giles Limited, 2014), 129, Catalogue 22.
Vesa Vahtikari, Tragedy and Performaces outside Athens in the Late Fifth and the Fouth Centuries BC (Helsinki: Foundation of the Finnish Institute at Athens, 2014), plate VI.2.
Ian McPhee, ed., Myth, Drama and Style in South Italian Vase-Painting: Selected Papers by A.D. Trendall (Uppsala: Astroms forlag, 2016), 72-76, 100-105.
John H. Oakley, "Inscriptions on Apulian Red-Figure Vases: A Survey," in Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings, ed. Dimitrios Yatromanolakis (Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing, Ltd., 2016), 130, figure 8.
Fay Glinister, "Ritual and Meaning: Contextualising Votive Terracotta Infants in Hellenistic Italy," in Bodies of Evidence: Ancient Anatomical Votives: Past, Present and Future (New York: Routledge, 2017), 143, figure 7.2.
Mary Louise Hart, "Text and Image: Euripides and Iconography," in Brill's Companion to Euripides, ed. Andreas Markantonatos (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 683-684.
Jacques Chamay, Ceramiques de Grande Grece et autres antiquities: Pierre Sciclounoff, collectionneur et mecene, 1926-1997 (Geneve: Editions Slatkine, 2021), 128-131.
Keely Elizabeth Heur, "Purposely Polysemy: Cross-Cultural Reception in South Italian Vase-Painting," in Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Österreich. Beiheft 3 Griechische Vasen als Medium für Kommunikation, ed. Claudia Lang-Auinger and Elisabeth Trinkl (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2021), 391, figure 1.
ProvenanceEx. coll. Pierre Sciclounoff (1926-1997), Geneva, Switzerland, said to have been purchased from Christian Boursaud [Galerie Hydra], Geneva, Switzerland, by 1986. Purchased by MCCM from Sciclounoff through Christoph Leon. Title transferred to the Italian Republic, August 29, 2023.
Status
On view