‘Simulated’ Pursuit Scenes on Red-Figure Pottery: An Iconographic Recontextualization

Pursuit scenes of female figures by male characters on red-figure pottery underwent important iconographic revisions during the last quarter of the fifth Century BC. The traditional subject of abduction was in fact revisited from a more explicitly ritual and non-violent standpoint. A paradigmatic case is that of a scene on a calyx krater realized by the workshop of the Himera Painter (420-409 BC), where the craftsman represented an unusual ritual pursuit performed at the rhythm of music. A systematic analysis of the figurative repertoire of western workshops shows that this iconographic "composition" – which recalls Attic tradition but is stripped of any iconic sign that suggests a violent interpretation of the scene – is also attested on numerous vases made in Magna Graecia. Thus, a common figurative vocabulary – able to rework a traditional iconographic theme in a new and original way – probably existed in the West. From the violent abduction, which characterizes the Attic products in the first half of the Fifth Century BC, we reach the works by the Himera Painter workshop and the other contemporary craftsmen who chose to represent a “simulated”, erotic and ritual pursuit on their vases: a revisited iconography that was born and grew right inside the early workshops of Magna Graecia and Sicily during the second half of the Fifth Century BC. Furthermore, the combination of the information coming from the reappraisal of the archaeological context and from the iconographic analysis of the scenes depicted on the red figure Sicilian vases (not only the one with the pursuit scene depicted on) allow us to suggest the existence of some very peculiar ritual activities within one of the most interesting examples of neighborhood sanctuary in an ancient Greek city, probably related to a phratry and to the nuptial sphere.