Black-Figure Hydria (Water Vessel): Frontal Quadriga (Body); Theseus and Minotaur (Shoulder) (c. 520 BCE): Art, History and Details

Black-Figure Hydria (Water Vessel): Frontal Quadriga (Body); Theseus and Minotaur (Shoulder) (c. 520 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:

Although their subjects differ, the three fields of figured decoration on this vessel relate to one another metaphorically through the theme of victory. Just as Theseus defeats the Minotaur on the shoulder, two lions converge on a deer in the predella (the small, lowermost panel). In the largest panel, victory is still to come, presumably for all three warriors shown: one in the chariot behind his driver, and one on foot on either side. Somewhat unusually, two of the warriors look directly out at the viewer, their frontal faces an interesting complement to the much more common frontal chariot.

Object facts

• Title: Black-Figure Hydria (Water Vessel): Frontal Quadriga (Body); Theseus and Minotaur (Shoulder)
• Date: c. 520 BCE
• Creator attribution: Antimenes Painter (Greek, Attic, active c. 530–510 BCE)
• Culture: Greece, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 43.2 cm (17 in.); Diameter of rim: 24.7 cm (9 3/4 in.); Diameter of foot: 15.2 cm (6 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1975.1

A detail from the museum

This type of water vessel, a hydria, takes its name from hudor, Greek for water (and still familiar in the English root hydro).

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Kathman, Barbara. "A Trio of Late Black-Figure Vase Painters." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 2 (1979): 50-66.
• Boulter, C. G., Jenifer Neils, and Gisela Walberg. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971.

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.