Friday, June 24, 2022

 

Blacksmith Working on a Helmet

Attic red-figure stemmed cup depicting a blacksmith working on a helmet, attributed to the Antiphon Painter, ca. 480 B.C. (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, accession number AN1896-1908.G.267):
John H. Oakley, A Guide to Scenes of Daily Life on Athenian Vases (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), pp. 51-52:
Second in popularity on Athenian vases, after the images connected with pottery production, were scenes of metalworkers. Interestingly, a major metalworking area of Athens was in the northwest Agora and not far from the Kerameikos, the potters' quarters, so that the painters did not have far to look for inspiration. Several of the metalworking scenes are mythological, showing Thetis and/or Hephaistos or Athena, and occasionally satyrs, so they are not included here. Armor is the most common object being worked on by the smiths, with a helmet, as in the tondo of a red-figure cup in Oxford by the Antiphon Painter of 480 BC (fig. 2.5), being the most popular object. Seated on a diphros, the smith holds out a Corinthian helmet in his left hand and a file/rasp in his right. Other tools, five files/rasps of different sizes, hang above him in the background; a furnace stands behind him and an anvil, an akmotheton, is set in a mound before him. On other vases, greaves, tripods, statues, and swords are shown being worked on.



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