(lively piano music)
Voiceover: We're in the Louvre
and we're looking at a large ancient Greek vase
that dates from middle of the 5th century.
It's a calyx-krater by an artist
that we call the Niobid Painter.
Voiceover: Now a calyx-krater is a large
punchbowl basically.
The Ancient Greeks used it to mix wine and water.
Their wine was pretty strong.
Voiceover: Now the Niobid Painter is known
for this particular vase
which shows on the back of it a terrible scene
about a mortal woman named Niobe.
Niobe had 14 children.
Seven daughters and seven sons
and she bragged about them
as being more numerous and more beautiful
than the children of the goddess Leto.
Voiceover: That was a bad idea.
You never want to display that kind of hubris
to a god or a goddess,
and in this case Leto's children happen to be
the god Apollo and the goddess Artemis.
Now Apollo is associated with the arts,
with music especially, with the sun perhaps,
and Artemis is the goddess of the hunt.
Both of those children here
exact revenge for their mother.
The Greeks were often concerned about mortals
displaying hubris, displaying pride.
Here we see Apollo and Artemis
killing Niobe's poor children.
Voiceover: According to the myth
they murdered all 14 of the children.
Here we see Artemis reaching back
into her quiver for yet another arrow.
We see Apollo drawing his bow back
and we see the children littering the field.
Voiceover: These figures still have a kind of stiffness
that I associate with the early classical
and I think that's especially obvious
in the figure of Apollo
who strides forward but doesn't seem
to have the sense of movement
that would be entirely natural
given what he's doing.
Voiceover: This is red figure painting
and that means that we're seeing bodies
that are part of the red clay of the pot
silhouette by a black background.
It allows for a tremendous amount of detail.
For instance in Apollo's body
the tension to his abdomen, to his face.
We see Artemis also with very delicate rendering
of the folds of her drapery.
Notice that both the goddess and the god
are rendered in perfect profile
whereas the dying children are more frontal or 3/4.
Voiceover: There is a stiffness there.
Voiceover: This is a period that we call the Severe Style
and it's just this moment when the archaic
is becoming the classical that we know,
for instance from the sculptures of the acropolis.
Voiceover: The other thing that's so obvious here
is that where Greek vases before this
had the figures on a single ground line.
The figures occupy different levels.
It seems as though the artist,
the Niobid Painter was attempting
to give us some sense of an illusion of space
with some figures in the foreground
and some in the background
although they're all the same size.
Voiceover: That's right,
there's no diminishing sense of scale
but we can get a sense of the idea
that there are different ground plans
when we look at the tree
on the upper right of the scene.
Let's go around to the other side
because we have a very different image
in contrast to the violence of the back.
Here in the center, in the place of honor on the vase,
the hero Herakles.
Herakles was part mortal, part god.
He's identifiable because he holds a club
and because he has a lion skin.
Voiceover: Now notice that he's
in the middle of the vase literally.
His feet don't touch the ground line.
He's in the middle
and figures are placed all around him.
Again, that idea of the artist
suggesting a sense of depth.
Art historians think that this shows
the influence of Greek wall painting,
none of which survived.
Voiceover: In fact, we think that this vase
might be a kind of copying of wall painting
by an artist whose name we know, Polygnotus
who painted both in Athens
and at the Sanctuary of Delphi, North of Athens.
Voiceover: He was credited as being the first artist
to paint figures in depth.
Voiceover: What we may be seeing on this vase is
an attempt to translate that wall painting
here onto a vase.
That would be an extraordinary thing
since virtually no Ancient Greek
wall painting has survived.
Voiceover: What's going on here?
What is Herakles doing?
Why is he surrounded by all of these warriors
some of whom are reclining,
some of whom are standing
and what is Athena doing over to the left of him?
Voiceover: One of the more prominent theories
suggest that this is not actually
a representation of the god Herakles
so much as a representation
of a sculpture of the god Herakles.
That is, this is a painting of the scultpure
of the mythic figure.
What's happening is that Greek soldiers
are coming to honor Herakles
asking him for protection before they go into battle.
Voiceover: Right.
At the very end of the archaic period 490 B.C.E
the Greeks battled the Persians
and against overwhelming odds
defeated the enormous Persian army.
This may show Athenian soldiers
asking for Herakles' protection
before the battle at Marathon.
If you look very closely it's almost impossible to see
there may be barely visible incised lines
that suggest that Herakles is actually standing on a podium
which would support the idea
tat this was the sculpture of the god
rather than the god amongst these men.
Voiceover: The relaxation expressed by the figures
is remarkable to me
especially the figure reclining at the bottom
who seems to be pulling himself up
using the leverage of his spears.
Voiceover: That relaxation is in such contrast
to the violence of the murders
on the other side of the vase.
It's a great reminder
of the way that Greeks love to contrast
the active against the passive,
the complex against the plain
and to draw sharp contrast in both imagery
and in their technique.
Voiceover: Art historian conjecture
that the style that the figures on different levels
comes from Greek wall painting,
and we know about Greek wall painting
from writers who celebrated it.
The subject matter that we see here
is still very much a mystery
and the relationship of these two stories to one another
is still very uncertain.
(lively piano music)