Late antique jug from Budakalász decorated with hunting scenes
MúzeumCafé 18.
The jug decorated with hunting scenes found during excavations of an Avar Age cemetery (6-8 century AD) in Budakalász in 1989 is a valuable item of late antique and early Byzantine art in the Carpathian Basin. The jug was cast using the so-called lost-wax method. Today it is covered with a noble patina of greenish brown, yet originally it must have had a completely different colour. Due to its high zinc content, the base material, brass, had a colour similar to gold; therefore the symmetrical or asymmetrical silver and copper plate inlays were especially effective. The lip of the jug is funnel-shaped and the neck is covered with elegantly curving undulating lines. The body bulges underneath the central line and suddenly narrows above the widening bottom. A gracefully arching handle is soldered to the brim and the belly, and the figure of a predatory animal appears from underneath a diamond-shaped leaf on the arch of the handle. Similarly to Late Antique dishes, the body of the jug is divided by horizontal floral and figurative friezes, which frame hunting scenes. The precise analogy of the Budakalász vessel is still unknown; therefore the place and time of its making can be defined by comparative analysis of its shape, the composition and style of the scenes, as well as its iconography. In the case of Late Antique vessels in the first half of the 5th century bulging is of a lesser degree, and the dish does not lose its graceful proportions, as for instance can be observed on the jugs ornamented with Dionysian scenes or animals in the Seuso treasure. Later, at the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th centuries, bulging of the early Byzantine jugs is more emphatic. A later parallel of the Budakalász jug shape is the Mala Pereščepina silver jug with the control stamp of Byzantine emperor Maurikios Tiberios.