The Speech of Figures

Gloria Pinney unearths meaning in Ancient Greek images

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Imagine a Norman Rockwell painting of a family seated around a table at Thanksgiving -- children, parents, and grandparents gathered together in the glow of this quintessentially American holiday, about to enjoy the rich, familiar flavors of a home-cooked meal.

Surely no 20th-century American would have trouble interpreting such a picture. But what if it were unearthed 2,500 years hence? How easy would it be to grasp the full significance of roast turkey in the American mind and palate? Would a cultural critic of the remote future be able to see the unstated connection between this family meal and the story of the Pilgrims' survival in the New World? Would that critic be able to identify the nostalgia for intact family relationships which the painting and the holiday evoke?

The link between words and images may be fairly self-evident when dealing with the products of contemporary culture. But with pictures thousands of years old the connection can be far more tenuous.

That is the problem Gloria Ferrari Pinney faced as she tried to come up with an interpretation of certain types of Greek vase painting from the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. Pinney wanted to understand the iconography of vase painting that depicted the world of women.

Pinney, who was appointed professor of classical archaeology and art in the Department of the Classics, effective July 1, has been putting the finishing touches on a book that explores this topic along with larger methodological issues about the interpretation of metaphor in the visual arts. The book, Figures of Speech, will be published by the University of Chicago Press.

"Dr. Pinney is recognized for her research in the interface of art and literature and of visual and verbal representation," said Classics Department Chair Gregory Nagy, the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and professor of comparative literature. "In her forthcoming book, Figures of Speech, she cogently argues that visual images play against a repertory of assumptions about behavior and cultural norms, and conversely that texts play against a background of implicit visualizations. This work on the metaphoric use of visual images in Greek art is sure to have a major impact on the broader field of Hellenic studies."

In Figures of Speech, Pinney examines a large group of vase paintings that depict young women engaged in a variety of activities -- adorning themselves, tossing a ball, fetching water, and, the most prevalent image, spinning wool.

By carefully examining and comparing the paintings, Pinney finally identified 21 different pictorial themes or units of discourse, which tended to flow into one another. She still wasn't certain what these pictures meant, but she felt safe in assuming that they held a meaning for the ancient Greeks.

She also made the assumption that if these images were so common in the visual arts, some echo of them could also be found in ancient Greek literature.

This approach turned out to be fruitful. A common theme in Greek poetry is the chorus of young maidens who spend their time playing and working together. In many cases, there is one who stands out as the most beautiful. Maiden goddesses such as Artemis or Athena are often depicted in this way. A similar theme can be seen in The Odyssey, where Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, has returned to maiden status in her husband's absence, and spends her time weaving, surrounded by her maidservants.

Pinney also found hints in the writings of Aristotle that threw light on the meaning of the paintings. Aristotle said that one of the characteristics of an ideal young woman was "philergia," or "industriousness without servility." The women in the vase paintings seemed to embody this trait.

Pinney concluded that the depictions of wool-working and other household chores did not represent actual domestic labor among the women of ancient Greece, but rather one aspect of what was seen as female perfection, combining diligence and sex appeal.

"In reality, most of the wool-working in ancient Greece was done by housewives, but these young girls represented an ideal type, and the spinning was seen as a mark of glamour," Pinney said.

Pinney's exploration of metaphor in both its visual and literary manifestations continues, not only in Figures of Speech, but in several other works in progress. In one book-length project, The Athenian Representation of the Past, she questions methodologies that divide Greek visual representations into either mythological subjects or genre scenes, showing that in many cases, what have been taken as pictures from everyday life actually represent an idealization of a remote past.

A forthcoming article, "The Geography of Time: The Nile Mosaic and the Praenestine Library" focuses on a large mosaic discovered in the 16th century in the ancient Roman city of Praeneste (the site of present-day Palestrina). The mosaic reflects an idea found in Plato and common in the classical age that the Greeks relearned culture from the Egyptians after their own civilization was destroyed by natural disasters.

Born in Bologna, Pinney developed an interest in the ancient world early on, earning a bachelor's degree in classics from the Universita degli Studi di Roma in 1964. She studied at the Scuola Nazionale di Archeologia from 1964-66, then came to the United States to attend the University of Cincinnati. She earned her Ph.D. there in classical archaeology in 1976.

She has taught at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa., and at Bryn Mawr College, becoming the Doreen Canaday Spitzer Professor of Classical Studies there in 1990. In 1993 she went to the University of Chicago, where she was professor in the departments of art history and classical languages and civilizations.

Her books include Il commercio dei sarcofagi asiatici (Rome, 1966); Aspects of Ancient Greece (edited with B.S. Ridgeway, 1979); and Materiali del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Tarquinia XI: I vasi attici a figure rosse del periodo arcaico (Rome, 1988).