Sicilian Red-Figure Calyx Krater

An ancient Sicilian red-figure calyx krater by the Chequer Painter; the obverse depicting a scene of a komos procession led by a nude youth holding a staff and sheaves of wheat, followed by a draped female playing the double-flute aulos and followed by another nude youth holding a torch and staff, each wears a white fillet around their head; on the reverse are two nude youths, one holding a strigil and the other an aryballos.

Sicily.
Ca. 410 - 400 BC.
Height: 14 1/2 in. (37 cm).

The Chequer Painter and his follower the Dirce Painter are considered to be the chief forerunners of both early Campanian and Paestan vase painting.

The output and quality of the Greek colonial potters working in Southern Italy increased greatly following the Peloponnesian War when Attic exports fell off sharply. South Italian Colonial Greek craftsmanship of the 4th century BC was an amalgamation of the Ionian (Athenian, Attic) conventions, and Doric (western colonial Greek) styles, with a noticeable native Italian aesthetic. The five predominant regional schools of South Italian pottery were: Apulian, Sicilian, Lucanian, Paestan, and Campanian.

cf.:A. D. Trendall, The Red-Figure Vases of Lucania, Campania, and Sicily, (1983), pls. 78.1 and 78.2.

Formerly in a German private collection.

Inv#: 8149

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