Storage Vessel with Herakles Fighting Acheloos and Europa on a Bull

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Storage Vessel with Herakles Fighting Acheloos and Europa on a Bull

Artist The Acheloos Painter, Leagros Group (Greek)

Place of OriginMade in Athens; excavated in 1886 in Suessula, Italy

Dateabout 510-500 BCE

DimensionsH: 13 in. (33 cm); Diam (mouth): 6 5/32 in. (15.6 cm); Diam (body): 8 9/16 in. (21. 7 cm); Diam (foot): 4 5/16 in. (11 cm)

MediumBlack-figure ceramic, wheel-thrown, slip-decorated earthenware with incised details

ClassificationCeramics

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1952.65

Not on View

DescriptionThis black-figure neck amphora has a rounded body, narrow neck, and twin handles. Figures are painted in black slip with incised details and added white, now partially faded. Side A depicts Herakles seizing Acheloos by the horn while the river god, in hybrid form, prepares to strike with a stone. A serpent-like brand is incised on Acheloos's rump. Side B features a maenad, possibly Europa, seated sideways on a bull, holding a wreath. Similar branding appears on the bull’s rump. Leafy branches frame both scenes.

Label TextThis Attic black-figure amphora, attributed to the Acheloos Painter, was discovered in 1886 in a tomb at Suessula, an ancient site in southern Italy excavated by Marcello Spinelli, baron of Barra and prince of Scalea. The tomb, among the largest in the necropolis, contained two burials and a collection of fine ceramics, suggesting it belonged to an elite family. One scene on the vase shows Herakles wrestling the river god Acheloos, who appears in a hybrid centaur-like form. In myth, Acheloos was a shapeshifter who could take the form of a bull, a serpent, or a man-headed creature. Here, he rears up on his hind legs, wielding a stone as Herakles seizes him by the horn. The opposite scene depicts a woman riding a bull, long debated as either a maenad or Europa, the Phoenician princess famously abducted by Zeus, who took the form of a bull and carried her across the sea to Crete.Published ReferencesDuhn, Friedrich Karl von, “La necropoli di Suessula,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung, vol. 2, 1887, p. 258, no. 1, fig. 23, pls. 11-12.

Beazley, John, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters, Oxford, 1956, p. 370, no. 124.

Brommer, F., Vasenlisten zur griechischen Heldensage, 1956, p. 1, no. 8.

Brommer, F., Vasenlisten zur griechischen Heldensage, 2nd ed., 1960, p. 1, no. 8.

Washington, Seldon, "Greek Vase Painting," Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 5, no. 4, 1962, p. 86.

Riefstahl, Rudolph M., "Greek Vases," Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 11, no. 2, 1968, p. 86.

Isler, H.P., Acheloos, Berne, 1970, pp. 18, 27, 117, 136, pl. 5.

Moore, Mary B., and Dietrich von Bothmer, "A Neck-amphora in the Collection of Walter Bareiss," American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 76, no. 1, Jan. 1972, p. 3, footnote 11.

Brommer, F., Vasenlisten zur griechischen Heldensave, 3rd ed., 1973, p. 3, no. 8.

Boulter, Cedric G., and Kurt T. Luckner, Corpus vasorum antiquorum: Toledo Museum of Art, U.S.A. fasc. 17, Toledo, 1976, p. 6-7, repr. pl. 11, 12.

Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (LIMC), Zurich, 1981-1999, vol. I, pt. 1, p. 27, no. 252, repr. vol. I, pt. 2, p. 52.

Dorr, Erin, "Fragments of a Lost Culture," Perspectives, Ohio University, vol. 10, no. 1, Spring-Summer 2006, side A, repr. p. 23 (det., col.).

Lee, Mireille M., “Acheloös Peplophoros: A Lost Statuette of a River God in Feminine Dress,” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, vol. 75, no. 3, July–September 2006, pp. 319-320, fig. 3.

Buxton, Richard. Forms of Astonishment: Greek Myths of Metamorphosis, New York, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 85, fig. 24, repr. p. 89.