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The Portland vase: new clues towards old solutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

John Hind
John Hind
Affiliation:
School of History, University of Leeds
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Extract

The number of interpretations of the scenes (or scene, if it is regarded as one continuous one) on the two sides of the Portland Vase had by the end of 1992 reached the impressive total of forty-six. All of these, while involving valuable observations about the figures, their poses and setting, fall a long way short of proof. Most are over-complicated, introducing implausible identifications of figures and scenes. This is true of the most recent attempts by Painter and Whitehouse in the Journal of Glass Studies, repeated in the volume on Roman glass jointly edited by one of the same writers, and of a note in JHS cxii (1992) by Harrison.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 115 , November 1995 , pp. 153 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1995

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References

1 Journal of Class Studies iii (1990) 172–6, with 130–6.

2 Painter, K. and Whitehouse, D., in Painter, K. and Newby, M. ed. Roman glass: two centuries of art and invention (London 1991) 33–45.Google Scholar

3 Harrison, S.J., JHS cxii (1992) 150–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Hind, J.G.F., JHS xcix (1979) 20–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Winckelmann, J.J., Anmerkungen über die Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Dresden 1767)Google Scholar; Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Vienna 1776).

6 Ashmole, B., JHS lxxxvii (1967) 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Clairmont, C.W., AJA lxxii (1968) 280–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Haynes, D.E.L., JHS lxxxviii (1968) 58–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haynes, , The Portland vase2 (London 1975).Google Scholar See also LIMC iv 1.504.

9 Hind (n. 4) 20; Journal of Glass Studies xxxii (1990) 134.

10 Hind (n. 4)21–4.

11 LSJ s.v. (‘a torch of reeds’, citing Neanthes Historicus [3rd c. BC]).

12 Ashmole (n. 6) 11–13; see now LIMC iv 1.506 (illus. iv 2.294.19).

13 Hind (n. 4) 22.

14 LSJ s.v.

15 OCD s.v. ‘tree worship’, with ref. to Mannhardt, W., Waldund Feldkulte2 (Berlin 1904).Google Scholar

16 ‘The two trees with lobed leaves (previously thought to be planes or figs) are much more likely to be white poplars (Populus alba, abele). It is native to Greece and well known in myth’ (Celia Fisher, pers.comm. 31.8.1993).

17 The Guardian 10.11.1993 (Reuter).

18 Celia Fisher, pers.comm. 31.8.1993; and more definitely in favour of the myrtle in a second letter of 1.11.1993, since the flowers of the myrtle are ‘hardly possible to depict on a vase’. Cf. Pliny, NH xv 36.Google Scholar

19 Journal of Glass Studies xxxii (1990) 134.

20 For the widespread acceptance of Winckelmann's interpretation of two figures in this scene see the table of ‘Earlier Interpretations’ in Journal of Glass Studies xxxii (1990) 173–6.

21 Hind (n. 4) 20.

22 Haynes, The Portland vase 2 21.

23 Haynes, , JHS lxxxviii (1968) 58 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar and JHS this volume, p 149 n. 16.

24 Pace Haynes loc. cit., who thinks that Eros is urging Peleus on to the Thetis he has identified on the other side of the vase. But Peleus gazes at Nereus beyond Eros.

25 Variously said to be Poseidon, Proteus, Nereus, Oceanus, Zeus or Romulus. Ashmole (n. 6) 6 thought that this figure could only be Poseidon/Neptune.

26 Haynes, The Portland vase 2 15.

27 LSJ s.v. Cf. Pliny, NH xvi 79Google Scholar, xxiv 53.

28 ‘The tree past which Cupid is flying could be taken for a bay or laurel (Laurus nobilis), but it is just as likely to be an oleander which is also known as the rose-bay or rose-laurel’ (Celia Fisher, pers.comm. 31.8.1993).

29 ‘The leaf on the roundel is far more like a plane. It is too well and sharply divided for a fig, which usually has fewer and more rounded lobes’ (Celia Fisher).

30 Ashmole (n. 6) 4–5.

31 Journal of Glass Studies xxxii (1990) 138–9, 152–3.

32 Kerényi, C., The gods of the Greeks (London 1958) 154Google Scholar; Kern, O., Religion der Griechen (Berlin 1926) iii 127 ff.Google Scholar

33 Haynes, The Portland vase 2 21.

34 I am grateful for the comments and encouragement of John Boardman, Brian Cook and Roger Ling, though none of them is to be held to endorse everything that is found here. Part of the above argument, that relating to Side B, has appeared in ‘Achilles and Helen on White Island in the Euxine Pontus’ (in Russian), VDI (1994.3) 121–6.