Antiquities Exhibits

The Meidias Painter was an Athenian red-figure vase painter active in the last quarter of the 5th century BCE (fl. c. 420 to c. 400 BCE). He is named after the potter whose signature was found on a large hydria, depicting the rape of the daughters of Leucippus (Leukippos), prince of Messenia, by the Dioscuri, excavated from an Etruscan tomb.  John D. Beazley, renowned connoisseur of Greek vases, said of Meidias' work, "Here there is beauty: The gleam of gold, loves and ladies with soft limbs, in soft raiment, and all that is shining, easeful and luxurious: perfume, honey and roses."  The Meidias Painter was known for combining his theatrical “florid” style with his “flying drapery.”  He worked during the period of the Peloponnesian War and his depiction of many Attic legends, particularly those involving Erichtonios, son of Hephaistos, points to "a clear assertion of local pride prompted by the Athenians' decisive role in the fight against the barbarian" acc...

The ancient legend of the abduction of the Sabine women by the men of Rome has inspired artists for centuries. Upon finding the city bereft of women, Rome’s founder, Romulus, invited the neighboring peoples to a festival as a pretense to the abduction. Each Roman youth carried off an unmarried woman from the Sabine contingent as his bride. When the Sabines later attacked Rome to reclaim their females, the women ran onto the battlefield and secured peace between their fathers and husbands. Here we see two dramatic treatments of the subject by Italian artists Andrea Andreani and Giambologna.  Andreani, an Italian engraver, revived the technique of the chiaroscuro print, the use of light and shadow to define three-dimensional objects, at the end of the sixteenth century and created a number of ambitious works including a reproduction of Andrea Mantegna's "Triumph of Caesar".  Some evidence exists that ancient Greek and Roman artists used chiaroscuro effects but the techni...