Contribution to a 2020 ‘In Conversation’ piece on “Sensual Religion” for the journal Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Beliefs. The other essays in the conversation are by Professor Graham Harvey (on studying religion and the senses), Dr Angeliki Lymberopoulou (on Byzantine images of Hell), and Dr Patricia Rodrigues de Souza (on sensual approaches to Candomblé).
FIG 1 Situla (ceramic bucket) from a tomb in Apulia, southern Italy, depicting Dionysos in the company of two maenads and a satyr. Attributed to the Varrese Painter. Produced c. 350-340BCE. Height 28.1 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1992.317.
For researchers working on religions in the distant past, Sensual Religion presents some intriguing new possibilities. Angeliki Lymberopoulou has already shown how far our understandings of painted scenes of Hell in Byzantine churches can be enriched when we adopt a multisensory approach, and the same is true of earlier “classical” Greco-Roman art. The painted ceramic situla (“bucket”) shown at Figure 1 gives us a particularly neat example of how Sensual Religion can raise new questions and make us notice different things about our ancient evidence.
The situla now lives in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but it originates from the region of Apulia (modern Puglia) in Southern Italy. It belongs to a wider class of South Italian red-figure vases, which were produced largely in the fourth century BCE in the regions of Lucania, Apulia, Campania, and Sicily. Southern Italy at this time was part of the wider Greek world, hence the strong visual similarities between these vases and the much better known (and more highly valued) red-figure ceramics from Classical Athens and its surrounding countryside. We have more than 20,000 extant examples of South Italian red-figure vases, nearly all of which come from funerary contexts like graves or chamber tombs. These are stunning material documents, saturated with potential insights into ancient life and death. Until recently, however, they have been studied almost exclusively from a traditional iconographical perspective, with a heavy emphasis on “connoisseurship” – that is, the identification of artists and workshops from the minute scrutiny of “giveaway” signature details.
Putting these South Italian vases back into their original sensory contexts is difficult. Excavation reports are lacking, and most of these objects do not have precise provenances. Moreover, we know very little about the eschatological beliefs of the people who commissioned and used them – far less, for example, than with the Orthodox Christian scenes of Hell discussed above by Angeliki Lymberopoulou. Yet there are still things we can say. For instance, we might note that the lifting and moving of this vase would have presented its ancient users with some physical challenges, since the two protrusions on either side of the rim are – unusually – not pierced with holes, and could therefore not accommodate any handle. This unexpected absence of a handle would have necessitated a closer-than-usual bodily contact with the vessel when bringing to the tomb. This observation might then raise questions about the use of this vessel by the mourners, or by the dead person in the afterlife. Does the lack of handle betray an expectation that the bucket would stay in its final position within the tomb, without being moved or manipulated? Or was the expectation that the bucket would be used in the afterlife, but not in any way that corresponded to its function in everyday “living” activities?
Turning to the scene on the side of the vase represented in Figure 1, we see the god of wine, Dionysus. He sits on a rock, holding out a wine-cup, flanked by two maenads. To the left, a snoozing satyr leans against a marble louterion (a purification basin for washing hands ahead of rituals). This scene is packed with sensory stimuli, from the fragrant vines and tasty wine to the discarded tympanum (drum) laying near to the god’s right foot, not to mention the anticipated crash of the winecup which dangles precariously from the satyr’s loosely-curled fingers. These objects were all standard elements of the cult of Dionysus, which combined to create a unique Dionysian “sense-scape,” helping to orient the worshipper’s body and prepare it for an encounter with the god. But again, this bombardment of sensual images must have had a special significance within the space of the tomb. It may have worked to accentuate the difference between sensual life and cold, unmoving death, or perhaps it signalled the continued central- ity of senses in the afterlife. Dionysiac scenes are very common on South Italian vases, and may be connected to the so-called “mystery cults,” in which the afterlife was viewed in deeply sensual and bodily terms, including those of rebirth and journeying.
This proliferation of new questions can sometimes accentuate our feeling of alienation from the past, by reminding us of everything we do not know. On the other hand, there are certain moments when our sensual scrutiny of ancient objects can jolt us into an unexpected, even uncanny, feeling of closeness. The slip of an artisan’s hand, or the agency of the artistic material itself, can disrupt the established norms of representation, leading to a sort of “prediction error” that has the potential to connect us to ancient viewers (and “listeners,”“feelers,” “movers,” and so on). Looking closely at the bent right leg of Dionysus on this situla, we can perceive a dark red drop of clay-slip – in all likelihood an accidental spillage – running down from between the god’s upper thighs, in the direction of the floor. Almost halfway down his leg, the drop stops, dries up. But by this point it has already shaken us from our complacency, disrupt- ing our contemplation of the scene, and our understanding of the divine bodies within it.
This “deviant drop” sets up a paradox. On the one hand, it makes the surface of the vase more apparent, spoiling the illusion of three-dimensionality by trespassing over the painted lines of the god’s tunic. On the other hand, it simultaneously ruptures the vase’s two-dimensional surface, creating a rival species of three-dimensionality, and forcing us to consider the permeability of the divine body. Is this clay-slip, or is it ichor, the blood of the gods? And at the same time as our own sensuous body confronts the porous body of the god, a third body appears before us: that of “The Varrese Painter,” his overloaded brush in hand. Under normal circumstances, ancient Greek and Italic artists are invisible, hidden behind the classical illusory techniques of mimesis and their own virtuosity. But for the viewer of Figure 1 who spots its “matter out of place,” the body of the artist is suddenly – and sensually – present.
Mistakes in religious contexts have the power to generate a range of reactions, including surprise, laughter, or even terror. A spilled drop of clay-slip on a ceramic vessel is (probably) not serious – at worst, it simply disrupts the artistic illusion, destabilising the ontological status of the divine scene painted upon it. In other cases, though, the consequences are potentially more dangerous. What happens if food prepared for the orishas is burnt or dropped? What if a statue of a deity – even a memory-laden “replica” – falls off a shelf and breaks? This is just one example of how objects might play active (agentive) roles in the “doing” of religion – and of how our own studies of material religion might be further nuanced by a focus on sensuality.
