Some Attic Red-Figure Scenes

This chapter discusses three scenes drawn from the corpus of Attic red-figure vase-painting to show how pictured gestures invite certain interpretations, and create some ambiguities, and in one case deliver what may be a political message. The Vote on the Arms, a legendary event that in its original telling could not have included such later implements as ballots, inspired a number of early Attic Red Figure painters to compose a version in which Achaian heroes act as judges. Although the heroes in the paintings are not labeled as such, the identification seems sure. In these scenes, Athena, Odysseus, and Aias express themselves vividly by means of gestures that the artists saw around them every day. Some postures, even when widely represented in varying contexts in painting and sculpture, continue to be ambiguous: lively genre scenes in which men and women gesticulate as they converse still do not reveal all of their secrets. In one popular scene, men and woman engage in spirited conversation, using their hands as they speak, either in the midst of some sort of mercantile situation or just concluding. In a third example, labels identify female figures on a pyxis by the Meidias Painter, where Eukleia and Eunomia are set together by position and by gesture. The labels are consonant with certain political currents of the time.