Apulian Gnathia-ware Epichysis

Apulian Gnathian red-figure Epichysis with a beaked spout and a high strap handle to the rear, sharply angled at the top; a modelled lip, with a ridge decorated with tongues at its inner edge; on each side of the curved handle one female head protome in relief. The spool is decorated with a laurel-leaf band in yellow/cream. The upper face and shoulder are painted with elaborate foliate tendrils and palmette below the handle, volutes on either side, with a central figure of a draped woman offering-bearer seated in profile to the left, her hair pulled back in a sakkos, a cista (large carket) in her raised right. It is decorated with an encircling frieze of ovolo and dot on the shoulder flange; the base of neck shows rays.

Stylistic remarks: Subject and execution are exceptionally close to those frequently favoured by the Menzies Group, of the so-called Patera-Ganymede Workshop, active in Apulia during 330–310 BC.

Object number: 127.008.

Date: 330–310 B.C.

Parallels: San Francisco, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco 2000.89.1; Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum 78.AE.277, 78.AE.350; Princeton, Princeton University Art Museum Y1929-200; Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts 75.41.A (typology and part of the decorative programme); Yale, Yale University Art Gallery 1913.282.

References: Bohen, B. et al, From Alexander to Augustus. University of Illinois: Champaign, 1983; Trendall, A. D. and Cambitoglou, A., The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia. Vol. II. Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1982; Wisseman, Sarah U. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Philipp von Zabern: Mainz, 1989, p. 39, Plate 50, 2-3; Mayo and Hamma, Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia, 1982, pp. 159-160, no. 65; Baur, P. V. C., Catalogue of the Rebecca Darlington Stoddard Collection of Greek and Italian Vases at Yale University, 1st ed., New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1922, pp. 172-174, no. 282; Beauchamp Walters, H., History of Ancient Pottery: Greek, Etruscan, and Roma, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905, p. 179; Baur, P. V. C., Preliminary Catalogue of the Rebecca Darlington Stoddard Collection of Greek and Italian Vases in Yale University, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1914, p. 30, no. 287.

Photo by Steve Morton