Propylaeum

Women appearances characterized by the reversal of established role models have always evoked a particular fascination. The conventional and the deviation from it become visible in the intentional shift away from the standardized representation scheme of ancient women on Attic vases. Characterizations directly connected to the body - in contrast to clothing or furnishings - are given special emphasis in the picture: age features, tattoos, and African facial features.
Unconventional women appear as pictorial means of differentiation in a wide variety of thematic areas: thus, an old tattooed nurse can be a component of emotion directing in funeral scenes, a supposedly old African sacrificial servant can make recognizable a parody of festival depictions, or a Thracian slave woman playing with her exotic charms can suddenly become the center of attention. Therefore, the women are intentionally removed from clear categorizability; the focus is on their effective and sometimes ambivalent fit into the pictorial structure.