Amphora of the Andokides Painter
Andokides Painter and Lysippides Painter (active c. 530-510 BC) · c. 515-510 BC
One side of this amphora shows Herakles bringing Cerberus, the two-headed hound of the underworld, out into the light: the hero kneels and coaxes the dog with a chain while Athena, in helmet and aegis, stands behind him and a Doric column marks the gate of Hades. On the other side Dionysos, crowned with ivy, holds a wine cup and a vine branch as a woman pours for him and satyrs play the castanets and the lyre. Compare the two techniques: the Herakles scene is in the new red-figure manner, the figures left in the colour of the clay, while the Dionysos scene is in the older black-figure style.
Vases decorated in both techniques are called bilingual, and they were made in Athens around 515 to 510 BC, in the very workshop where red-figure had just been invented. Scholars attribute the red-figure side to the Andokides Painter, named after the potter who signed some of his vases, and the black-figure side to his collaborator, the Lysippides Painter. The amphora was found at Vulci in Etruria and was bought in 1836, entering the collection of King Louis-Philippe. It is one of the key documents for the birth of red-figure painting.
Did You Know? The two sides of the vase were painted in two different techniques, perhaps by two different painters working in the same shop.
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