AN ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED AMPHORA (TYPE B)

The Swing Painter takes his name from the amphora in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which depicts a young maiden on a swing. As J. Boardman informs (p. 63 in Athenian Black Figure Vases, Oxford, 1974), the Swing Painter "is not a good painter, nor a conscious comedian, although his placid figures with their big heads, fashionably tiny noses, and often clenched fists, bring a smile to our lips." The Rockefeller amphora is a very fine example of the Swing Painter's work. The frontal chariot scene shown on the obverse was a favorite of the artist, which he painted multiple times (see the examples now in the Tampa Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, and two in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, Milan, pls. 35, 47, 56 & 57 in E. Böhr, Der Schaukelmaler, Mainz, 1982). The bearded man, possibly the hero Herakles, capturing the hind in the presence of Hermes on the reverse is unique, although on another amphora by the Swing Painter in the British Museum, Apollo is shown similarly grasping the animal's horns, but here observed by three draped men (Böhr, op. cit., pl. 47).

Mr. Rockefeller fondly recalled receiving this vase in the mid-1920s as prize awarded to him over his brothers by his mother in a competition designed to "encourage habits of orderliness in her sons."