Ancient Greek Ceramic, Campanian Red figure, Bell krater with a Harpist. (School of the Cassandra Painter) with TL Test. 21 cm H. - 21 cm - (1)

Bell krater with a harpist CULTURE: Campana, Magna Graecia PERIOD: 4th century BC MATERIAL: Pottery DIMENSIONS: Height 21 cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, French. 1960. Ex. Auction Paris. CONDITION: Intact, without restorations or repainting. DOCUMENTS: With thermoluminescence test. DESCRIPTION: A bell krater decorated on the front with the figure of a seated woman. Her chest is naked, and her legs are covered by some pleated clothing. Her hair is pulled back in a bun held with a white ribbon or diadem. Her beautiful face is seen here in profile. She is wearing a necklace and earrings. The left hand is touching the strings of a harp. With the right, stretched out behind her, she is holding something which it is difficult to identify. She is wearing a bracelet on her right wrist. This scene suggests both serenity and sensuality, as it is a delicate musical image, a theme not all that common on Greek vases. One can imagine the movement of the beautiful woman plucking the strings of the harp to produce musical notes. We can observe vegetal decorations of palmetes painted in red on both sides of the scene and below the handles of the vase. There is a row of laurel leaves in the upper area, below the lip of the vase. A wreath of waves circles the entire vessel below the pictorial elements. The figure of an athlete in a palaestra, dressed in a himation, decorates the back of the base. This is a motif frequently repeated on the reverse of Greek vases, and often where the degree of detail is lesser, as the viewing of the back was considered to be unimportant. The krater is a type of Greek pottery used to mix water and wine and from which cups were filled. It was moved to the space were a meal was to be eaten and was placed either on the ground or on a dais and the steward in charge of drawing the wine used a ladle to pour it into the guests’ cups. Kraters were mostly pottery, but some were made from precious metals, and were made in a variety of shapes according to the taste of the artist, although they did always have a wide mouth. The most widely occurring ones are column kraters, calyx kraters, bell kraters and volute ones. This example is from Apulia in the south of Italy mostly coincident with the modern province of Foggia and Mesapia to the south. From 320 BC Athens stopped exporting ceramics and only produced some vessels that were given as prizes to athletes in the Panathenaic Festivals. The ceramic produced by the Greek colonies in the Italian peninsula took the place of the Athenian ware in the Mediterranean market. Red-figure pottery was one of the most important figurative styles of Greek production. It developed in Athens around 530 BC and was used until the 3rd Century AD. In the space of a few decades it took over the place of the previous dominant style of black-figure pottery. The technical base was the same in both cases but in red-figure pottery the colouring is reversed so that the figures stand out on a dark background as if they were lit up in a more natural way. The painters who did black-figure work were forced to keep the motifs they painted well apart one from the other and to limit their complexity. In contrast, the red-figure technique gave much greater liberty. Each figure was silhouetted against a black background, allowing the painters to portray anatomical details with greater accuracy and variety. The technique consisted of painting the motifs on the vessels while they were still unfired using a transparent slip, which when fired took on a black coloration. In this manner the motifs were invisible before firing so that the painters had to work from memory without seeing their earlier work. Once the piece had been fired the zones which had not been covered by the slip retained the red colouring of the clay while the glossy areas, those that had been “painted, acquired a dense, brilliant black colour. This krater could well be from the school of the Cassandra painter or even by his hand. If you compare to the name vase of the Cassandra painter on which the rape of Cassandra is depicted ( Capua Museum 7554 LCS 225 no 2/1 pl 88, I . ) and in A. D. Trendall page 176 nr 273. The Cassandra painter paints neat figures with small heads, and finely-drawn faces, as well as he liked to paint elaborate patterns. He painted many mythological scenes like Perseus and Androeda, the birth of Helen, or Alkmene on the pyre. BIBLIOGRAPHY: - MAYO, M. ed. The Art of South Italy, Vases from Magna Graecia. Richmond. 1982. - TRENDALL, A. D. Red Figure Vases of South Italy and Sicily. London, 1989. - TRENDALL, A. D. , CAMBITOGLOU, A. First Supplement to the Red-Figured Vases of Apulia. London, 1983. Notes: The seller guarantees that he acquired this piece according to all national and international laws related to the ownership of cultural property. Provenance statement seen by Catawiki. The seller will take care that any necessary permits, like an export license will be arranged, he will inform the buyer about the status of it if this takes more than a few days. The piece includes authenticity certificate. The piece includes Spanish Export License (Passport for European Union) - If the piece is destined outside the European Union a substitution of the export permit should be requested.