Mastos Painter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Dionysos_Ariadne_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_1562.jpg/220px-Dionysos_Ariadne_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_1562.jpg)
The Mastos Painter (fl. mid-6th century BC) was a painter of ancient Greek vases. He is named for a black-figure mastos used by the art historian John Boardman to illustrate the type, which is shaped like a woman's breast (Greek mastos).[1]
Works
The Mastos Painter belonged to the circle of the Lysippides Painter.[2] The work for which he was named depicts Dionysus, two horse-legged satyrs or silens,[3] and Hermes as they "gaze admiringly" at Ariadne holding the infant Oinopion, her child with Dionysus. This "gentle kind of narrative"[4] is characteristic also of the Antimenes Painter, the mature work of the Andokides Painter, and Oltos and Epiktetos around 515 BC.[5]
Although the painter takes his name from his exemplary mastos, he also produced work on other vase types. On a belly amphora executed around 525 BC, he depicts an ivy-bearing Dionysus bringing his mother Semele from the underworld; the god looks back at her as she climbs into a chariot drawn by the magnificent pair of horses who dominate the scene. Hermes, wearing his characteristic petasos hat, carries branches of foliage as he accompanies the horses. Three bearded horse-tailed satyrs of varying size fill out the composition. The largest leaps in amazement on the chariot-shaft, looking back at the recovered Semele; another stands shoulder-height before the horses as he plays an aulos, the double-pipe wind instrument. A third, the smallest figure in the group, stoops beneath the horses, one hand extended toward their bellies and the other grasping his phallus.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Panathenaic_amphora%2C_Mastos_Painter%2C_AM_of_Nafpliko%2C_202347.jpg/220px-Panathenaic_amphora%2C_Mastos_Painter%2C_AM_of_Nafpliko%2C_202347.jpg)
The artistry has been characterized as "gently rounded" and allusive, elastic in its articulation.[6] The female figure has also been identified as Ariadne.[7]
The Mastos Painter also depicts a Panathenaic victory procession on what has been identified as a genuine prize amphora.[8] The scene depicts the winning horse in a race, mounted by the nude boy-jockey holding a pair of branches. An elaborately clothed man stands in front of the horse, patting its muzzle and holding a wreath and branches. He may represent the owner, who would have been considered the victor. The man who stands beside the horse, holding its bridle, is perhaps the trainer. A third well-clad man holding branches stands behind the horse.[9]
The Mastos Painter has also been credited with a black-figure vase depicting the pankration.[10]
References
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- ^ Beth Cohen, "Oddities of Very Early Red-figure and a New Fragment at the Getty," in Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum (J. Paul Getty Museum, 1989), vol. 4, pp.79–80.
- ^ Cohen, "Oddities," p. 80.
- ^ Guy Michael Hedreen, Silens in Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Myth and Performance (University of Michigan, 1992), p. 149.
- ^ Würzburg 391. Karl Schefold, Gods and Heroes in Late Archaic Greek Art (University of Cambridge, 1992, originally published in German 1978), p. 18.
- ^ Schefold, Gods and Heroes, p. 18.
- ^ Würzburg 267. Schefold, Gods and Heroes, p. 46.
- ^ Anne Mackay, Deirdre Harrison, and Samantha Masters, "The Bystander at the Ringside: Ring-Composition in Early Greek Poetry and Vase-Painting," in Signs of Orality: The Oral Tradition and Its Influence in the Greek and Roman World (Brill, 1999), p. 136.
- ^ Nigel James Nicholson, Aristocracy and Athletics in Archaic and Classical Greece (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 105.
- ^ J.D. Beazley, The Development of Attic Black-Figure (University of California Press, 1986, rev. ed.), p. 85; Nicholson, Aristocracy and Athletics, pp. 106–107.
- ^ Mark Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece (Cambridge University Press, 1998), identification of cover image, n.p.
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