Red-figured water jar (hydria), signed by Meidias as
potter
Greek, about 420-400 BC
From Athens, Greece
Scenes from Greek mythology
The figures on this hydria are divided into two zones.
The upper zone illustrates the abduction of the daughters of
Leukippos by the Dioskouroi, Kastor and Polydeukes (Castor and
Pollux). Aphrodite, goddess of love, sits in the lower part of the
scene, clearly conniving in the abduction. Her attendant Peitho,
goddess of Persuasion, flees from the scene, but Aphrodite and
Zeus, father of the Dioskouroi, do not seem moved. The scene in the
lower zone shows Herakles performing his final Labour, receiving
the golden apples of the Hesperides from the nymphs responsible for
guarding the tree in a garden at the end of the earth.
Both scenes are remarkable for their peaceful treatment of
violent subjects. Other versions of the story of the daughters of
Leukippos show the daughters struggling to free themselves. Here,
they seem more concerned with displaying their beautiful clothing
in the most elegant way possible. Similarly, earlier illustrations
of Herakles's final Labour show him fighting a terrible serpent.
Here the nymphs seem perfectly happy to surrender their apples,
while the serpent coils limply and unthreateningly round the tree.
This softened mood, along with the delicate treatment of the
drapery, is very characteristic of late fifth-century Athenian vase
painting.
This vase was the finest in the first collection of Greek vases
formed by Sir William Hamilton and sold to the British Museum in
1772. It appears with other antiquities at Hamilton's side in the
portrait of him painted in the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, now
in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Artists of the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often copied groups of figures
from the vase to decorate walls, furniture, silverware and pottery.
Josiah Wedgwood, for example, quoted from it on his 'First Day's
Vases'.
L. Burn, The Meidias painter (Oxford, 1987)
D. Williams, Greek vases (London, The British Museum Press, 1999)