Terracotta red-figure calyx-krater

This red-figure calyx-krater is too small for a normal use of the shape (a big container for mixing wine and water) and might have been made to be deposited in a grave. The main side depicts Eros, the winged god of love, leaning with his foot on a rock. White residue on in arm, shoulder and head indicate that his skin was once painted white. He is facing a woman who holds a large gift tray with her right hand and a thyrsus in her left, indicating that she is a maenad, a female follower of the god Dionysos. The combination of Eros and the gift tray alludes to marriage, while the thyrsus sets the scene in Dionysos’realm. On the other side, two youths draped in long mantels are standing, facing each other. The one on the left holds a strigil (an instrument used by athletes after exercise).

The style and the composition with a main scene (Eros) and a secondary one (the youths), as well as the generic iconographic subjects point towards Attic red-figure painting. However, scientific analysis on vases attributed to the same painter – conventionally called the Painter of Athens 14627 – in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, indicate that they were made in Boeotia, a region close but different from Attica. Determining if such productions were made by Athenian painters who immigrated to Boeotia or by Boeotian painters closely imitating Attic style is impossible. In any case, in Boeotia, similar small kraters were found in graves where both imported Attic red-figure vases and local ones were painted with the same type of imagery referring to wedding, brides and characters from Dionysos’ circle.