Thompson: Images of Ritual Mockery on Greek Vases (Dissertation) (2025)

Review of David Walsh, Distorted Ideals in Greek Vase-Painting: The World of Mythological Burlesque

Hermathena 188, 2010

Distorted Ideals in Greek Vase-Painting: the World of Mythological Burlesque, D. Walsh (2008), American Journal of Archaeology 114 (January 2010.)

Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of Visual Humour

2009

Thompson Righteous Freaks Grotesque Figures on Greek Ritual Vases

Visual Humour on Greek Vases (550–350 BC): Three Approaches to the Ambivalence of Ugliness in Popular Culture

The Palgrave Handbook of Humour, History, and Methodology, 2020

Ugliness, in a society obsessed with beauty was often feared and mocked, but it could also be used to criticise mainstream values. This was the choice made by Athenian vase-painters of the sixth to the fourth centuries BC. Mass-produced at the height of Athenian democracy, painted vases were an inexpensive and popular artform that offer us an amazing insight into the daily life of the great city. In contrast to other artforms often commissioned or too expensive to fool around with, vase-painters made a liberal use of parody, visual puns, situation comedy and caricature. The study of the visibility of ugliness on Greek vases opens a number of unexpected theoretical and methodological issues which help us better define visual humour in ancient Greece. At least three forms of ugliness were displayed on vases: (1) caricature, an intentional form of ugliness; (2) the inherent ugliness of physical deformity, foreigners, the elderly and the ‘other’; (3) finally, the construction of ugliness both physical and moral through the intrusion of a ubiquitous humorous mythological creature called the satyr in a ‘civilised’ society presents a third pathway to ugliness.

Manliness, violation, and laughter: rereading the space and context of the Eurymedon vase

Journal of Greek Archaeology

The focus of this short study is a well-known and much discussed object: a red-figured type VII oinochoe, dated to the mid-460s BC and attributed (perhaps) to the Triptolemos Painter, or certainly to his circle. Since Konrad Schauenburg’s 1975 publication of the artefact, it has been known as the ‘Eurymedon Vase.’ It has rightly been classified as ‘unique’ by Amy Smith and although it is beyond the scope of this study to spend too much space re-rehearsing the scholarship on the vase in any detail, a general overview might prove profitable for what follows below.

Pappa, E. 2022. Herakles and the Gorgon in Athenian Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Burlesque or Civic Theology? Acta Classica 65: 157-194.

2022

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/323/article/860964#info_wrap The article revisits some Athenian Black-Figure vases that depict Herakles and a monster. While it is indebted to previous iconographic analyses, it adopts a broader, contextual methodology, firmly situating them within the socio-religious setting of Archaic Athens. Adducing relevant data, it opens new lines of investigation. The implications of visual humour for civic theology are explored in light of recent studies, rejecting a postulated derivation of these scenes from theatrical plays. Rather, it is proposed that the vases had a cultic function, with their imagery deployed as an allusion to the rites of the Panathenaia, referencing the aetiological myth of the festival.

Jokes on Him: Caricature and Male Clients of Prostitutes on Greek-Vase Painting

The Function and Significance of Late Attic Black-figure Vases

Johns Hopkins University, 2017

Cult in Context - The Ritual Significance of Miniature Pottery in Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period

Several previously overlooked questions related to ancient Greek dedicatory practices are investigated in this thesis. The main questions addressed are: how do the contexts of Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic votive miniature vessels inform us about the Greek cults in which they are used, and the transmission of such cults? What role did miniaturisation play in the sanctuaries and the rituals in ancient Greek society, and why miniaturisation? A number of supplementary questions accompany the main questions, for example, what did miniaturisation mean in the context of votive dedications in sanctuaries? This thesis aims to demonstrate that earlier explanations arguing that miniatures are simply and profoundly cheap substitutes for more expensive objects do not work well, since many of these small objects are carefully made and some are elaborately decorated, and would thus not have been cheaper, or less time consuming to produce compared to full sized objects. The chronological time frame of the thesis is limited to the Archaic to the Hellenistic period, and its core is three case studies with different themes and different geographical locations in focus (Kalydon, Olympia, Kombothekra, various sites in South Italy, and other sites for comparison). The thesis addresses also issues relating to, for instance, miniaturisation, imitation and models, the functionality, and non-functionality of small votive objects, agency, trade, and colonization. The study of ancient Greek dedicatory practices within the scholarship of Classical Studies tends to concentrate on votive statues, religious architecture, inscribed metal dedications, and stelai. Little attention has been paid to less extravagant dedications even though these groups of material have been found in abundant amounts in sanctuaries throughout Greece. Moreover, in those cases where this material has been published interpretation and thoroughly analyses are often lacking. As a result, this study makes important contributions to two large questions within Classical studies: how did the Greeks view their gods and how did the Greeks interact with the gods. Miniature pottery contributes to our understanding of ancient Greek ritual practice as well of specific rituals. The work presented in this thesis accentuates that miniature pottery’s material meaning and symbolic importance can no longer be dismissed.