Black-Figure Neck-Amphora (Storage Vessel): Herakles and Nemean Lion (A); Dionysos, Satyrs, and Maenads (B) (515–510 BCE): Art, History and Details

Black-Figure Neck-Amphora (Storage Vessel): Herakles and Nemean Lion (A); Dionysos, Satyrs, and Maenads (B) (515–510 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Painter of Berlin 1899 (Greek, Attic).

The work and its context

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

The neck-amphora, one of the most popular vase shapes in Archaic Athens, provided painters with ample space for both figural and ornamental decoration. Herakles, the greatest of Greek heroes, performs his most famous deed on the obverse, wrestling the Nemean lion. His patron goddess Athena, together with his nephew Iolaos, holding the hero’s club, stand by. On the other side is an unrelated scene, showing the wine god Dionysos with dancing maenads and satyrs. Abundant ornament covers other areas: stylized lotus blossom and palmette chains on the neck; intricately linked palmettes and lotuses beneath each handle; and a key pattern, linked lotus buds, and rays on the lower body.

Object facts

• Title: Black-Figure Neck-Amphora (Storage Vessel): Herakles and Nemean Lion (A); Dionysos, Satyrs, and Maenads (B)
• Date: 515–510 BCE
• Creator attribution: Painter of Berlin 1899 (Greek, Attic)
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 39.8 cm (15 11/16 in.); Diameter: 29 cm (11 7/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1970.16

A detail from the museum

After Herakles strangled the Nemean lion, he wore its pelt as a protective trophy.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings 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.