Room XIV and room XV
Rooms XIV and XV conclude the chronological visit intended to allow the visitor to experience three centuries of the necropolis of Spina.
They are dedicated to certain categories of particularly valuable and rare objects that make National Archeological Museum in Ferrara unique in the world, since the findings are, in the majority of cases, "contextualised" , although exposed here per typological criterion, very frequently adopted in other collections.
XIV
The room XIV contains a selection of ritha, vases in various forms (a human head or animal) used in symposiums, particularly valuable for the production technique, and of lebetes gamikoi, vessels used to accompany future brides. The main attraction of the room, however, is the long series of fish plates, that depict known species, identified thanks to countless literary testimonies, which provide us with an interesting insight into everyday life of Spina’s inhabitants and give us information about one of their main food sources.
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XV The room of Masterpieces
The room that closes the visit of the necropolis contains works by some of the most important ceramists, active in Athens between the fifth and fourth centuries BC, vessels that with their fascinating painted stories conduct the visitor in a sort of ancient "city of the images." Here we can understand how the myths that were told in pictures, as well as their theatrical representations, were the "religious" expression of human destiny and divine presence.
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The chronological sequence, the criteria for exposure, allows us to understand the stylistic variations and production techniques. Every painter has his own distinctive sign which, in the absence of a real signature and in place of it, allows us to distinguish them.
In these stories told in pictures one figure stands out- the god Dionysus, celebrated for his manyfold meanings and values and for his importance in the Greek religious world. Important festivals in the official celebrations of the city of Athens were devoted to this god of wine, theatre and of symposium. The life of Dionysus is seen in two elegant kraters. The first, attributed to the Painter of Altamura (tomb 311 of Valle Trebba), depicts the god holding Oinopion, his son and Ariadne’s, on his knees. The name of the child is actually an allusion to wine (oinos in greek), of which he is a personification. The second is the calyx krater by the Painter of Goluchow (tomb 323 of Valle Trebba), with a soaring menad defending herself from a satyr. An allusion to the real and mythical wine production is found on an Attic kelebe by the Orchard Painter (tomb 254 of Valle Pega) with a rare scene of satyrs that tread the grapes.
Dionysus is also present on a bell-shaped crater from tomb 161C of Valle Pega, where he attends a satyresque drama, and again on the large krater by the Niobid Painter (tomb 313 of Valle Trebba), where he participates in the struggle against the Giants to re-establish a new order together with the other gods of Olympus, and in a night procession in his honor, perhaps on the occasion of Lenee, Athenian festivals in the month of January. The krater is dedicated to Demeter, the goddess of the harvest,who, like Dionysus, is the dispenser of a primary good, and the subject of a mystery cult linked to rebirth. To Demeter and her daughter Persephone the hero Triptolemus, with ears of wheat in his hand, offers a libation before going among men to teach them the cultivation of grain.
A real masterpiece is the calyx krater by the Peleus Painter (tomb 617 of Valle Trebba), depicting the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the future parents of Achilles (this is one of the most famous marriages of the Greek mythology during which the dispute arose which gave rise to the Trojan War) and the bell-shaped krater of the tomb 44C of Valle Pega, with the myth of the blind seer Phineus, king of Thrace, whose table was constantly contaminated by the Harpies. This myth is rarely depicted, but documented by literary sources (Phineus is the protagonist of a lost tragedy by Sophocles, and known to us thanks to the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes) and is also a warning to men of the terrible power of the gods.
The town of Spina
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