The Hermitage guide

From the study of an extensive collection of Corinthian pottery, including many items also found on the northern Black Sea coast, it has been possible to identify new groups of works and attribute them to conventionally named artists, and to revise certain ideas, hitherto current in literature, concerning the economic links between the Bosporan area and Corinth.

The collection of Attic pottery is quite substantial. The black-figure vases feature objects painted by pupils of Exekias, some pieces by the Amasis Painter displaying the decorative elegance characteristic of his manner, and several examples of the subtle work produced by Psiax. There is also a collection of Little-Master cups, whose number is constantly being increased by new finds from Berezan Island.

Epictetos, Euphronios, Douris, and the Brygos Painter are among the famous names to paint red-figure vases. Many potters and artists, however, did not sign their works. Nevertheless, practically all the Attic vases that have survived can be divided according to their stylistic features into certain groups ascribed to one artist and named conventionally after their most representative specimen. We have thus the vases of the Shuvalov Painter, the Pan Painter (after a krater now in Boston), the Penelope Painter (after a skyphos depicting her, now in Munich), and others. One of the masterpieces of red-figure vase painting, conventionally called “Vase with a Swallow”, is also attributed to an anonymous artist.

The Hermitage is justly proud of its collection of red-figure vases of the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C. (the time of the Meidias Painter, and the post-Meidias period) from the Bosporan necropoli. Also from the Bosporan Kingdom are a number of vases with figures in relief, such as a lekythos by Xenophantos, and the “Sphinx” and “Aphrodite”, two figure vessels of world renown from a necropolis near Phanagoria. They were made in the same workshop, and are remarkable for the harmony of their forms, the classical beauty of their faces, and for their polychrome colouring enhanced by restrained gilding.

The large collection of Italic vases contains examples from all periods of the development of vase painting in various areas of the Apennine Peninsula. Among the most exquisite are the bucchero vases, the Apulian kraters, and the works from Lucania and Campania, including the famous “Regina vasorum”, decorated with painted and gilt figures in relief. The artists who produced it employed the sophisticated techniques of relief work and polychrome painting that had been achieved by the fifth century B.C.

The collection of Greek and Roman sculpture comprises over a thousand pieces. Only a few are Greek originals, with the best of them, the funerary stele of Philostrata (fifth century B.C.), done under the influence of Phidias. The examples of Greek sculpture and fragments from the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods come mainly from the excavations in the area of the northern Black Sea coast. The main material for studying the sculpture of ancient Greece is provided by Roman copies giving a fair idea of the artistic qualities of originals which have generally not survived.

The nucleus of the collection is formed by copies of the works of the great Greek sculptors of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. or of masters of their circle. On the whole they provide a worthy picture of the unparalleled flowering of Greek sculpture in the Classical period. The monumental statue of Asklepios, an example of cult statuary, is by the Athenian sculptor Myron or by one of the masters of his circle. The Head of the Doryphoros (probably representation of Achilles) is a magnificent example of the style of Polykleitos, a sculptor of the Argivo-Sikyonian school. It is executed in dark basalt and is very close to its bronze prototype. An idea of the works of Phidias, the most brilliant representative of classical art, can be obtained from copies by anonymous sculptors of his circle, and from a Roman copy of a frieze depicting the Slaughter of the Niobids, based on a relief by Phidias that has not come down to us. The colossal, majestic Head of Athena may be attributed to Kresilas, so great is its stylistic affinity with his famous Portrait of Perikles.