Engendering Greek Vases: What’s a Man Doing with that Hydria?
Amy Sowder Koch, Department of Art + Design, Art History, Art Education
The Greek hydria has long been defined as a woman’s vessel, largely stemming from numerous depictions of finely dressed ladies convening at fountains on painted vases. The primary function of the shape, traditionally defined, was to transport, collect, and store water – all domestic, feminine tasks. More nuanced considerations, however, demonstrate that the shape served the entire community in diverse ways beyond its water-holding capacity.
Material and written sources attest clearly that the hydria played important roles in men’s lives as well as women’s, but such a dominant feminine attribution for the shape in modern scholarship has allowed us to overlook its central position in the male sphere, where the vessels were carried and used in distinct ways from their feminine counterparts.
My research seeks to recalibrate our gendered understanding of the hydria by restoring the masculine component, demonstrating that the type was multivalent across gendered boundaries and deeply embedded into the framework of Greek culture.
Evaluating the role of this particular shape in its masculine context allows us to credit it with a greater fluidity than has been traditionally recognized and to rethink the high degree of specialization that we typically attribute to Greek vase shapes. My research also begins to reveal much about societal attitudes towards citizenship, family, education, and inclusion in polis life.
