Laudator Temporis Acti

Red-figure plate, ca. 520-500 BC (British Museum, no. 1867,0508.1022): Robin Osborne, Archaic and Classical Greek Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 145-146:

A plate signed by Epiktetos, which was found at Vulci and is now in the British Museum, illustrates the art of the simple tondo image at its most impressive [77]. Two garlanded revellers make their way home after a party. The younger man pipes their way, while the older feels the strain of the partying. The circular field, re-echoed in the artist's signature, which runs clockwise from the right hand to the left foot of the older reveller, and by the curved back of that reveller himself, is skilfully employed to emphasize the rolling progress of the older man. The younger man's sobriety is brought out by his upright pose, and reinforced by the vertical lines of the case for his pipes, which hangs from his shoulder, and by the way he holds the pipes up. The profiles are clean, the balance delicate, and the physical forms suggested with great economy of line. Although in other works Epiktetos shows an interest in twisted poses and oblique views, here the bodies are made substantial by the simplest of means, the showing of one arm or one thigh behind the other, the genitals appearing behind the line of the leg, the gathering of drapery.