Painting with Music
Visualizing Harmonia in Late Archaic Representations of Apollo Kitharōidos
In: Greek and Roman Musical StudiesAbstract
When Apollo is depicted playing his lyre, the representation of his active musical performance suggests a sonic element in the viewer’s perception of the image. In this paper, I examine how Apollo’s music and its effect upon his audience are communicated in late Archaic Athenian vase-painting. I draw attention to three musical terms, namely ῥυθµός, συµµετρία, and ἁρµονία, which were defined around the same time that the images were created. These concepts were also used for art criticism, encouraging a comparison between art and music. Working between these musical terms and the visual images, I show that the material representation of Apollo’s music informs each image’s composition through the repetition of similar lines and forms among Apollo, his instrument, his audience, and the plants and animals that accompany them. The images suggest that the sounds of the god’s music draw the composition together into a musical harmonia, thereby continually reaffirming the unifying character inherent to Apollo’s music.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Barker, A., ed. (1984). Greek Musical Writings, 1: The Musician and his Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Barker, A. (2007). The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Beazley, J.D. (1956). Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters (ABV). Oxford: Oxford+ University Press.
-
Beazley, J.D. (1963). Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters (ARV). 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
-
Beazley, J.D. (1930). Der Berliner Maler. Forschungen zur antiken Keramik. Berlin/Wilmersdorf: Keller.
-
Beazley, J.D. (1971). Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters (Paralipomena) 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Bélis, A. (1984). Un nouveau document musical. BCH 108.1, pp. 99-109.
-
Bundrick, S.D. (2005). Music and Image in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Buranelli, F., and Sannibale, M. (2003). Vaticano: Museo gregoriano etrusco. Milano: FMR.
-
Butler, S., and Purves, A., eds (2013). Synaesthesia and the Ancient Senses. Durham: Acumen.
-
Camp, J.McK. (1980). Gods and Heroes in the Athenian Agora. Athens/Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
-
Carpenter, T.H., Mannack, T., and Mendonça, M., eds (1989). Beazley Addenda: Additional References to ABV, ARV2, & Paralipomena. 2nd ed. (Add2). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Castaldo, D. (2000). Il pantheon musicale: iconografia nella ceramica Attica tra VI e IV secolo. Ravenna: Longo.
-
Chiarini, S. (2018). The So-called Nonsense Inscriptions on Ancient Greek Vases: Between Paideia and Paidiá. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
-
Coccagna, H.A. (2014). Manipulating Mastoi: The Female Breast in the Sympotic Setting. In: A. Avramidou, and D. Demetriou, eds, Approaching the Ancient Artifact: Representation, Narrative, and Function, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 399-411.
-
Derrida, J. (1987). The Truth in Painting. Translated by G. Bennington and I. McLeod. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
-
Ferris, D.S. (2000). Silent Urns: Romanticism, Hellenism, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
-
Gaifman, M. (2017). Framing Divine Bodies in Greek Art. In: V. Platt and M. Squire, eds, The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 392-424.
-
Gaifman, M. (2018). The Greek Libation Bowl as Embodied Object. Art History (special issue: The Embodied Object in Classical Antiquity) 41.3, pp. 444-465.
-
Gaifman, M., and Platt, V. (2018). Introduction: From Grecian Urn to Embodied Object. Art History 41.3, pp. 402-419.
-
Grethlein, J. (2016). Sight and Reflexivity: Theorizing Vision in Greek Vase-Painting. In: M. Squire, ed., Sight and the Ancient Senses, London: Routledge, pp. 85-106.
-
Heesen, P. (2016). Meaningless, But Not Useless! Nonsense Inscriptions on Athenian Little-Master Cups. In: D. Yatromanolakis, ed., Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings, Oxford: Archaeopress, pp. 91-118.
-
Hurwit, J.M. (1977). Image and Frame in Greek Art. AJA 81, pp. 1-30.
-
Kahil, L. (1984). Artemis. In LIMC, vol. 2, Zurich: Artemis, pp. 618-753.
-
Kéi, N. (2015). The Floral Aesthetics of Attic Red-Figure Pottery: Visual Adornment and Interplay bewteen Ornament and Figure. In: C. Lang-Auinger and E. Trinkl, eds, Pflanzen und Tiere auf griechischen Vase (Akten des internationalen Symposiums an der Universität Graz, 26. – 28. September 2013), Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, pp. 271-280.
-
Kéi, N. (2018). Beneath the Handles of Attic Vases. In N. Dietrich and M. Squire, eds, Ornament and Figure in Graeco-Roman Art: Rethinking Visual Ontologies in Classical Antiquity, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 143-166.
-
Kéi, N. (Forthcoming). L’esthétique des fleurs: kosmos, poikilia et charis dans la céramique attique du VIe et du Ve siècle av. J.-C.
-
Korshak, Y. (1987). Frontal Faces in Attic Vase Painting of the Archaic Period. Chicago: Ares.
-
Kowalzig, B. (2013). Broken Rhythms in Plato’s Laws: Materialising Social Time in the Chorus. In: A.-E. Peponi, ed., Performance and Culture in Plato’s Laws, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 171-211.
-
Kurtz, D., and Beazley, J.D. (1983). The Berlin Painter. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
-
Kurtz, D., ed. (1989). Greek Vases, Lectures by J. D. Beazley. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
-
Lambrinudakis, W., et al. (1984). Apollon. In LIMC II, pp. 183-327. Zurich: Artemis.
-
Lissarrague, F. (1990). The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet: Images of Wine and Ritual. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Maas, M., and McIntosh Snyder, J. (1989). Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece. New Haven: Yale University Press.
-
Marconi, C. (2017). The Frames of Greek Painted Pottery. In: V. Platt and M. Squire, eds, The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 117-153.
-
Mathiesen, Th.J. (1984). Harmonia and Ethos in Ancient Greek Music. The Journal of Musicology 3.3, pp. 264-279.
-
Mayor, A., Colarusso, J., and Saunders, D. (2014). Making Sense of Nonsense Inscriptions Associated with Amazons and Scythians on Athenian Vases. Hesperia 83.3, pp. 447-493.
-
Otto, B. (1984). Dekorative Elemente in den Bildschöpfungen des Kleophrades- und Berliner-Malers. In: Brijder, H.A.G., ed., Ancient Greek and Related Pottery (Proceedings of the International Vase Symposium in Amsterdam, 12-15 April 1984), Amsterdam: Allan Pierson Museum, pp. 198-201.
-
Padgett, M.J. (2017). Red-figure Hydria of Black-figure Shape. In: Padgett, M.J., ed., The Berlin Painter and his World: Athenian Vase-Painting in the Early Fifth Century B.C., Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum, pp. 311-313.
-
Pappas, A. (2012). More Than Meets the Eye: The Aesthetics of (Non)Sense in the Ancient Greek Symposium. In: I. Sluiter and R.M. Rosen, eds, Aesthetic Value in Classical Antiquity, Leiden: Brill, pp. 71-111.
-
Paquette, D. (1984). L’instrument de musique dans la céramique de la Grèce antique: études d’organologie. Paris: De Boccard.
-
Petridou, G. (2015). Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Platt, V. (2011). Facing the Gods. Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Platt, V., and Squire, M. (2017). Framing the Visual in Greek and Roman Antiquity: An Introduction. In: V. Platt and M. Squire, eds, The Frame in Classical Art: A Cultural History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-99.
-
Pöhlmann, E., and West, M.L., eds (2001). Documents of Ancient Greek Music: The Extant Melodies and Fragments Edited and Transcribed with Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Pollitt, J.J. (1974). The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
-
Porter, J.I. (2010). The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, Sensation, and Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Power, T. (2010). The Culture of Kitharôidia. Washington, D.C./Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
-
Sarti, S. (1992). Gli strumenti musicali di Apollo. Annali Dipartimento di Studi del mondo classico e del Mediterraneo antico: archaeologia e storia antica 14, pp. 95-104.
-
Shapiro, H.A. (1989). Art and Cult Under the Tyrants in Athens. Mainz am Rhein: P. von Zabern.
-
Shear, T.L. (1938). The Campaign of 1937. Hesperia 7.3, pp. 311-362.
-
Shear, T.L. (1937). Excavations in the Athenian Agora. AJA 41.2, pp. 177-189.
-
Siebert, G. (1990). Hermes. In LIMC, vol. 5, Zurich: Artemis, pp. 285-387.
-
Simon, E., Hirmer, M. and Hirmer, A. (1981). Die Griechischen Vasen. 2nd ed. München: Hirmer.
-
Starr, G.G. (2013). Feeling Beauty: The Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
-
Walters, H.B. (1927). London, British Museum III. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. VOL III. Great Britain 4, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
Walters, H.B., Forsdyke, E.J., and Smith, C.H. (1893). Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum, I-IV. London: Clowes.
-
West, M.L. (1992). Ancient Greek Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
-
West, M.L., ed. (2003). Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
-
Yatromanolakis, D. (2016). Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres). In: D. Yatromanolakis, ed., Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-42.
-
Young, W.J., and Ashmole, B. (1968). The Boston Relief and the Ludovisi Throne. Boston Museum Bulletin 66.346, pp. 124-166.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 547 | 83 | 4 |
| Full Text Views | 62 | 14 | 3 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 129 | 38 | 7 |
Painting with Music
Visualizing Harmonia in Late Archaic Representations of Apollo Kitharōidos
In: Greek and Roman Musical StudiesAbstract
When Apollo is depicted playing his lyre, the representation of his active musical performance suggests a sonic element in the viewer’s perception of the image. In this paper, I examine how Apollo’s music and its effect upon his audience are communicated in late Archaic Athenian vase-painting. I draw attention to three musical terms, namely ῥυθµός, συµµετρία, and ἁρµονία, which were defined around the same time that the images were created. These concepts were also used for art criticism, encouraging a comparison between art and music. Working between these musical terms and the visual images, I show that the material representation of Apollo’s music informs each image’s composition through the repetition of similar lines and forms among Apollo, his instrument, his audience, and the plants and animals that accompany them. The images suggest that the sounds of the god’s music draw the composition together into a musical harmonia, thereby continually reaffirming the unifying character inherent to Apollo’s music.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 547 | 83 | 4 |
| Full Text Views | 62 | 14 | 3 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 129 | 38 | 7 |