Penthesilea's Wish [Vol.2]

Chapter Sixteen

Instead of going to her room to rest at lunchtime, Daniela went back into the Blagen Library, leaving Nicasio and his new friends to socialize. From her now-familiar corner, she continued her perusal of images and texts associated with the enigmatic women warriors, known to appear sporadically in mythology, and surprising often as a popular motif of the ancient world. Her goal was simply review the Amazons specifically as depicted on the earliest ceramic materials, mostly decorative plates and vases, as she had only scratched the surface of their intrigue through statuary and architectural decoration the day before.

Using the Ambrosia online data base available to scholars at the Blagen, she found an overwhelming number of examples of pottery pieces located in museums and private collections. Though it was apparent that painted earthenware recorded much about the lives and customs of the ancient Greeks, the artwork appearing on these functional vessels and platters was also a means of recording much of their myths and legends.

Mostly painted during the centuries leading up to and including the Classical period from around 300 to 500 BCE, Daniela could see that two basic methods evolved in ceramic art, depicting much of human activity during these times. There was a flowering of the human form on ceramics after a long geometric period of design preceding it. She learned that the "Attic Black figure" style stile of ceramic painting consisted of ebony shaded characters meticulously incised off a red layer of painted background, then fired with a glaze in stone kilns. These artists of the day produced stunning effects showing light-footed athletes, running stylistically in competition, as if sharing the same rhythm of strides. The distinctive tradition of Greek gods and goddesses interacting in human form with mortal heroes was also a powerful motif in this early "Black-figure style."

Daniela noticed through her on-screen photos that certain scenes of the period, beginning around 620 BCE, began to show specific themes of battle between female warriors and a Greek heroes. Both of the sexes would be engaged in lethal hand to hand combat. These images, known as Amazonamachia-"war with the Amazons," stuck out in her mind with the same intensity as watching a dramatic scene in a film. The gripping element was that the combatants often fought to the death. There were literally hundreds of these vessels and plates found, catalogued and taken from collections throughout the world. The graceful Amazons engaged in battle had become a popular subject of choice it seemed, often expressing not only the contrast of dark characters against a light ground, but the brute strength of men against the agility and grace of young women.

But it was the more refined, "Attic Red figure" images on clay, rendered on plates, vases, and funerary urns showing up historically around 530 BCE and later, which Daniela noticed brought the intensity and humanity of men and women to life through their more realistic interactions. The artistic process of creation was similar, merely covering the vessel or plate-this time with a black background, and scraping off the design and scenes with finer, sharper implements of the craft. These tools, she learned, were usually an array of blades and fine points. This more careful process magically brought the scenes to life under the artists' incising tools. And here there was vastly more detail, more stylization and extra painted objects and textures. Now the Amazon themes seemed to be in high gear, suggesting that the public was ever more enthralled by their stories.

Abduction, revenge, and brutal scenes where the valiant women gave their all on horseback-only to be defeated once more, were celebrated and immortalized in this simple but elegant medium. A good number of the plates and vases had painted on them a specific scene curious to Daniela-the Amazons attacking soldiers who defended their city of Athens. In such images were engaged larger numbers of characters-the women warriors against well-trained hoplites who aggressively protected their fair city during what seemed to be a celebrated or historical siege.