Geometric Kantharos (Drinking Cup) (Primary Title)
Unknown (Artist)
The central image on this vase is a dipylon shield. No one knows if such shields were used or if this is an artistic motif descended from the figure-eight shields found centuries earlier in Mycenaean art. The dipylon shield evolved into the “Boeotian” shield, named for a region in Greece, which probably only existed in art. This style of shield served as a civic emblem on coins minted in the Boeotian city-state of Thebes, as on the nearby example.
Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund
“From Pasture to Polis: Art in the Age of Homer,” Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri (Columbia, MO): 10 October-5 December 1993; Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA): 1 January-30 March 1994; Sackler Museum at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA): 22 April-19 June 1994.
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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