Reading the Chigi Vase

by Jeffrey M. Hurwit

Hesperia, Volume 71, Issue 1
Page(s): 1-22
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3182058
Year: 2002
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ABSTRACT:

Long considered one of the technical masterpieces of Archaic Greek vase painting, the Protocorinthian Chigi vase (ca. 640 B.C.) has defied attempts at interpretation. Its imagery has most often been understood as a random assortment of exquisite but unrelated scenes--hunts, horsemanship, the Judgment of Paris, and a hoplite battle. It is argued here that there is in fact a logic behind the choice of scenes, and that the vase displays a pliable thematic unity, focusing upon the stages of maturation of the Corinthian male and the interpenetration of the everyday, the exotic, the heroic, and the divine in the lives of mortals.