Medea and Medea in Painting

Part One
Introduction to Greek Pottery Types and Painting Styles
Part Two
Comparative Study between Medea-Myths, The Medea
of Euripides, and Visual Representations on Pottery
Part Three
The Pre-Raphaelite Appropriations of the Occident and
the Orient in Frederick Sandys’s Medea (1866-1868)
 Part One
Introduction to Greek Pottery Types and
Painting Styles

• The Major Types of Greek Pottery

• The “Black Figure” Painting
• The “Red Figure” Painting
• Positioning of Characters in the Scenes
• The “Bilingual Amphora”
 Major Types of Greek Pottery
Image Source URL: < http://www.hellenic-art.com/greek-pottery-glossary.html>
 The “Black Figure” Painting

Above: Athena Defeats the Giant Enceladus on a Tyrian

Black Figure Amphora, French lithograph, 1844-61, New
York Public Library. Right: Achilles and Penthesilea,
painted by Exekias, ca 540-30 B.C. British Museum
 The “Red Figure” Painting: Representations within Circles
Right: Left:
Athena Athena
and and
Heracles, Jason,
Attic red- Attic
figure red-
kylix, ca figured
480–470 kylix,
BC ca 500 -
450 BC

Left: Hera
Right: and
Achilles Prometheus,
and Attic red-
Patroclus , figured
Attic red- kylix, ca
figure kylix, 490–480 BC
ca 500 BC
Right: The
Duel of Characters
Paris and (from left
Menelaus, to right):
Attic Red Aphrodite,
Figure Paris,
Kylix, by Menelaus,
Douris, ca Artemis
485-480 BC

Characters Left: The Duel

from left of Ajax and
to right: Hector, Attic
Athena, Red Figure
Ajax, Kylix, by
Hector, Douris, ca 485-
Apollo 480 BC
“Bilingual Amphora” showing Achilles and Ajax Playing Board Game, Black Figure version on the left by the Lysippides
Painter and the Red Figure version on the right by the Andokides Painter, 530-520 BCE, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
 Athenian The subject is
Bilingual Feasting
Amphora, Heracles. Black
painted by the Figure version
Andokides (below left) and
Painter, Red Figure
c. 525 B.C. version (Below
Antikenmuseum, right)
Munich
 Part Two
Comparative Study between Medea-Myths, The Medea
of Euripides, and Visual Representations on Pottery

Popular Themes from Medea-Myths Rendered in

Pottery Painting:

• Medea and Pelias

• Medea, Glauce, and Creon
• Medea’s Slaying of Her Son(s)
• Medea’s Celestial Flight on Her Chariot
 Medea and Pelias: “Black Figure” Representations

Above: Attic Black Figure Neck Above: Medea Rejuvenates the Ram. Attic Black
Amphora- Medea’s Promise to Pelias, Figure amphora, ca. 500 B.C.
510 -500 BC, British Museum
 Medea and Pelias: “Red Figure” Representations

Medea and Pelias. About 470 BC. Medea Rejuvinates the Ram, 480-
London, British Museum 470 BC
The Punishment of Pelias, Attic red-figured kylix by the Villa Giulia Painter, ca. 440 BC,
Rome, Vatican Museums, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco
 Medea
watches as
Jason
retreives the
Golden
Fleece,
Apulian Red
Figure.
4th Century
BCE
“A Feminist Manifesto,” or “The Woman’s Question”? Medea to Corinthian Women, from The
Medea of Euripides Translated by Gilbert Murray, 1906, Project Gutenberg Ebook, 2011
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35451/35451-h/35451-h.htm>
MEDEA
[. . .] We must pay
Our store of gold, hoarded for that one day,
To buy us some man's love; and lo, they bring
A master of our flesh! There comes the sting
Of the whole shame. And then the jeopardy,
For good or ill, what shall that master be;
Reject she cannot: and if he but stays
His suit, 'tis shame on all that woman's days.
So thrown amid new laws, new places, why,
'Tis magic she must have, or prophecy—
Home never taught her that—how best to guide
Toward peace this thing that sleepeth at her side.
And she who, labouring long, shall find some way
Whereby her lord may bear with her, nor fray
His yoke too fiercely, blessed is the breath
That woman draws! Else, let her pray for death.
Her lord, if he be wearied of the face
Withindoors, gets him forth; some merrier place
Will ease his heart: but she waits on, her whole
Vision enchainèd on a single soul.
And then, forsooth, 'tis they that face the call
Of war, while we sit sheltered, hid from all
Peril!—False mocking! Sooner would I stand
Three times to face their battles, shield in hand,
Than bear one child.
The Messenger’s account of the deaths of Glauce and Creon, from The Medea
of Euripides Translated by Gilbert Murray, 1906, Project Gutenberg Ebook,
2011
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35451/35451-h/35451-h.htm>

MESSENGER
[. . .] The carcanet of gold
That gripped her brow was molten in a dire
And wondrous river of devouring fire.
And those fine robes, the gift thy children gave—
God's mercy!—everywhere did lap and lave
The delicate flesh; till up she sprang, and fled,
A fiery pillar, shaking locks and head
This way and that, seeking to cast the crown
Somewhere away. But like a thing nailed down
The burning gold held fast the anadem,
And through her locks, the more she scattered them,
Came fire the fiercer, till to earth she fell
A thing—save to her sire—scarce nameable,
And strove no more.
 ….Death of Creon
MESSENGER
[. . .] So he cried.
But after, when he stayed from tears, and tried
To uplift his old bent frame, lo, in the folds
Of those fine robes it held, as ivy holds
Strangling among your laurel boughs.
Oh, then A ghastly struggle came! Again, again,
Up on his knee he writhed; but that dead breast
Clung still to his: till, wild, like one possessed,
He dragged himself half free; and, lo, the live
Flesh parted; and he laid him down to strive
No more with death, but perish; for the deep
Had risen above his soul. And there they sleep,
At last, the old proud father and the bride,
Even as his tears had craved it, side by side.
 Medea, Glauce,
and Creon, ca 320
BC, by the
“Underworld
Painter,”
Munich, Staatliche
Antikensammlungen
.
 Illusion of Stage Performance in the Specimen

Athena Place Façade,

resting representing
“polis”
Dioskouroi
Creon Hippotes

Corpse of
Merope
Glauce

Medea
slaying Helios
one son
The Altar,
representing “oikos”
 Medea
Kills Her
Son,
Campanian
Red Figure
Amphora,
by the Ixion
Painter, ca.
330 BC,
Louvre
Medea’s Parting Speech to Jason, from The Medea of Euripides Translated by
Gilbert Murray, 1906, Project Gutenberg Ebook, 2011
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35451/35451-h/35451-h.htm>

MEDEA.

An easy answer had I to this swell

Of speech, but Zeus our father knoweth well,
All I for thee have wrought, and thou for me.
So let it rest. This thing was not to be,
That thou shouldst live a merry life, my bed
Forgotten and my heart uncomforted,
Thou nor thy princess: nor the king that planned
Thy marriage drive Medea from his land,
And suffer not. Call me what thing thou please,
Tigress or Skylla from the Tuscan seas:
My claws have gripped thine heart, and all things shine.
 [. . .]

MEDEA.
Never! Myself will lay them in a still
Green sepulchre, where Hera by the Hill
Hath precinct holy, that no angry men
May break their graves and cast them forth again
To evil. So I lay on all this shore
Of Corinth a high feast for evermore
And rite, to purge them yearly of the stain
Of this poor blood. And I, to Pallas' plain
I go, to dwell beside Pandion's son,
Aegeus.—For thee, behold, death draweth on,
Evil and lonely, like thine heart: the hands
Of thine old Argo, rotting where she stands,
Shall smite thine head in twain, and bitter be
To the last end thy memories of me.

[She rises on the chariot and is slowly borne away.]

 Medea Fleeing on Helios’ Chariot

Red Figure Lucanian Hydria by the Policoro Painter, ca 400 BC. Policoro, Museo Nazionale
della Siritide
 Medea Fleeing on Helios’ Chariot

Phaliscan Red Figure Bell-Crater. 340-330 BC. Sankt Petersburg, Ermitage

Medea Fleeing on Helios’ Chariot

Lucanian Red Figure Krater Calyx,

by the Policoro Painter, ca 400 BC,
Cleveland Museum of Art,
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Erinyes Erinyes

Phrygian
Helment

Leaping The aureole

Dog of the sun
equals a
serrated
shield

Upturned
Signs of
Hydria
Violence in
the “Myth”
Medea as are
“theos”? equivalent to
Elements of
Realism in
the scene.
 Part Three
The Pre-Raphaelite Appropriations of the
Occident and the Orient in Frederick Sandys’s
Medea (1866-1868)

• Japanese and Greek Motifs in the Upper

Background
• Greek, Egyptian, and Chinese Motifs in the
Lower Background
• Egyptian and Scandinavian Motifs in the
Foreground
 Medea by
Frederick
Sandys,
1866-1868,
oil on wood
panel,
Birmingham
Museum and
Art Gallery
 The Background (Medea’s “Past”: Argo Arrives [left] and Golden
Fleece Retrieved [right])
Bat Golden Fleece
Crane
Yōkai (?)

Greek pottery style mixed with Japanese

Dolphin Argo scroll/panel painting
 The Background (The “Present Magical Concoctions”: Greek
and Egyptian Influences)
Note: The Circles are flanked by Serpents

Owl of Athena Seated Mummified Ammit the Khepri the Scarab

Falcon-deity (Ra/Seker) Devourer
 The Chinese Dragon-Motif, as Represented in the Imperial
Dragon Robe
Right: Dragon Robe of
Chinese Emperor Qianlong
(1736-1796)
18th century
Grassi Museum, Leipzig,
Germany

Above: Detail of the

Rising Dragon in
Sandys’s Medea
 The Egyptian “Leonine” and the Teutonic “Dragonian”

Above: The Dragon-

Left : Sekhmet, detail from Sandys’s Medea.
Right: Sekhmet, 18th Dynasty, Reign of
Amenophis III (1391 - 1353 BC), Louvre
Motif in the apparatus,
from Sandys’s Medea
Above: The North Portal of the
12th-century Urnes Stave Church,
Norway, showing Horse, Dragon
and Serpents