Black-Figure Dinos (Mixing Vessel): Warships (Int.); Heroic Scenes (Top) (c. 520–515 BCE): Art, History and Details

Black-Figure Dinos (Mixing Vessel): Warships (Int.); Heroic Scenes (Top) (c. 520–515 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Antimenes Painter (Greek, Attic, active c. 530–510 BCE).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Designed for use at a symposium, or drinking party, this large dinos has a wide mouth allowing easy access to its contents—wine mixed with water (and sometimes other ingredients for flavoring). While drinking, symposiasts would often recite poetry and celebrate the mythological exploits of gods and heroes, perhaps prompted by the images painted on their pottery. Here, the vase-painter clearly anticipated such use; when the vessel was full, the ships painted on the inside of the rim would appear to sail across the “wine-dark sea” (to borrow a phrase found frequently in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey). Other heroic scenes, including Herakles wrestling the Nemean lion and Theseus battling the Minotaur, appear on top of the rim, interspersed with chariots and anonymous combats.

Object facts

• Title: Black-Figure Dinos (Mixing Vessel): Warships (Int.); Heroic Scenes (Top)
• Date: c. 520–515 BCE
• Creator attribution: Antimenes Painter (Greek, Attic, active c. 530–510 BCE)
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Diameter: 50.8 cm (20 in.); Overall: 33.6 cm (13 1/4 in.); Diameter of rim: 34 cm (13 3/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1971.46

A detail from the museum

Unable to stand on its own, this round-bottomed vessel probably once had a separately made base.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1971." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 59, no. 1 (1972).
• Hoffmann, Herbert, and Marion True. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1973.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.