クラシック期アテナイ美術における「地方・都市の擬人像」の形成
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概要
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Personifications of countries and cities (C-C personifications) in the figure of a draped woman wearing a crown called a polos on her head and carrying a cornucopia or sheaf of grain in her hand were popular in Hellenistic and Roman art and later in western art Emperors or sovereigns often used them in art to imply and proclaim the vastness and fertility of their territories Although it has usually been thought that the origin of these personifications could be traced back to the art of the Classical period, there have been few special studies as to under what circumstances and in what way they were being created and used in Classical Greek art The aim of this paper is to investigate this question through Attic vase paintings and Attic document reliefs, and to suggest that these personifications would have appeared in connection with Athenian political affairs, thus assuming some nuance of political allegory, and that the archetype of the Hellenistic C-C personifications would have been shaped in Classical Athenian art Relying on the thorough and useful catalogue of Smith's dissertation (1997), I draw up a list of 17 vases on which there is a possibility that C-C personifications are represented, and examine in particular three vases on which the representations of C-C personifications are positively confirmed by their inscriptions Eleusis (on the skyphos by Makron and on the stamnos attributed to the Syleus Painter) and Epidauros (on the plate by the Meidias Painter) Eleusis, depicted in the scene of the departure of Triptolemos in the presence of the Eleusinian deities and others, seems to emphasize and advertise the importance of the place where the Mysteries were held and which was one of the demes of Athens It may be possible to consider that these two representations of Eleusis could be connected with Athenian religious and diplomatic politics, at a time when the city-state of Athens was striving to have this sanctuary achieve Panhellenic status On the other hand, the representation of Epidauros could be connected with the cult of Asclepios, which was introduced to Athens from Epidauros in 420 BC, just at the time this plate was made Attic document reliefs constitute within Greek art a unique genre directly connected with Classical Athenian politics, and therefore we can observe the appearance of many political personifications on the reliefs, but C-C personifications are relatively rare On the basis of Meyer's (1989) and Lawton's (1995) two detailed catalogues, I was with difficulty able to draw up a list of about 11, of which half are too badly broken for identification Even in the case of reliefs that are not so badly broken, there exist many different interpretations about one and the same figure A decisive element in the identification of a figure as a personification is the presence of an inscription, but only two examples with inscriptions Although the hierarchy of figures gives us one clue-personifications are always larger than mortals and almost always slightly smaller than deities-, sometimes a personification may appear on the same scale as a deity On one relief in Athens (NM1467) the figure occupying the central position is the object of a dispute as to whether she is Hera or the personification of Korkyra As Lawton and Smith showed, C-C personifications have an "ad hoc" nature, invented to fit some new event or particular needs Because of their lack of their own iconographic tradition they tend to borrow from the iconographic type of deities, nymphs or others that already had a long iconographic tradition It is significant that they typically often resemble such old traditional fertility deities as Demeter and Hera
- 2004-03-05