The Brooklyn Museum Annual 1963-1964 [antikvár]

Two Athenian Black-Figured Amphoras HERBERT HOFFMANN The amphoba, a jar with two handles reaching from the mouth or neck to the body, was used in antiquity for holding wine and occasionally other provisions. Two principal shapes were produced during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., and quantities of each have come down to us. Shape I is called the one-piece panel-amphora: "One-piece," because neck and body form a continuous and graceful curve; "panel," because the principal decoration is confined to two panels, one on each side of the vessel. Shape II is the neck-amphora, appropriately named because the neck of the vessel is distinctly separated from the body and treated as an independent field for decoration. The two recently acquired amphoras published in these pages comprise a well-preserved example of each type, the more valuable since both are decorated with pictures of fine quality. The vessels were produced in the potter's quarter of Athens in the second half of the sixth century B.C. and exported to Italy where they were found. No doubt the complex burial customs of the Etruscans, like those of the ancient Egyptians, favored the preservation of such art objects, for whereas the more austere Greeks frequently buried even their wealthy citizens in simple pit graves, the Etruscans cut elaborate burial chambers into the cliffs and bedrock of their cities and surrounded their dead with all the paraphernalia required in life for the pursuit of their favorite diversions. Dr. Herbert Hoffmann, formerly witli the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is an authority in the fields of Greek and Roman art and is presently engaged in completing a number of books on these subjeets. im I' \ !/'!I / I',/, ;; •¦¦7/ ri'^'iiff