LOT 0074

Greek Blackware Skyphos from the Choes Group Workshop of The Iliupersis Painter

4TH CENTURY B.C.

10 5/8 in. (90 grams, 27 cm wide).

With rounded loop handles with elaborate palmettes below, pedestal foot; Side A with nude Eros flying left, holding a dish in his right hand; Side B with a standing female (Psyche?) waiting for Eros and offering a wreath with her left hand, dressed in a flowing peplos, a small altar before.

Ex Barnard & Moore, 2003.
From a Norfolk, UK, private collection.

Accompanied by an original thermoluminescence analysis report no.N123k4 from Oxford Authentication.
Accompanied by an old Moore Antiquities identification card with reference no.1958 and invoice dated 26 July 2003.
Accompanied by an academic report by Dr Raffaele D’Amato.
This lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by a search certificate number no.11918-205900.

Cf. Cambitoglou, A. and Trendall, A.D., ‘Addenda to Apulian Red-Figure Vase-Painters of the Plain Style’ in American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Oct., 1969), pp. 423-433, pls.119-120, figs.20-21, 26; similar painting style on a terracotta hydria in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession no. 56.171.65, in Mayo, M.E. and Hamma K., The Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia, Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1982, no. 38, pp. 116–17, 308; some similar elements also on the volute crater in the MFA, accession no.1970.235; see also other works of Iliupersis in Trendall, A.D., Cambitoglou, A., The red-figured vases of Apulia, Oxford, 1978, figs.8/25; 8/51; 8/60.

The Iliupersis Painter was a south Italic Greek vase painter whose name is unknown. The name derives from a represented scene in a volute crater in the British Museum depicting the sacking of Troy (Iliou Persis). The characteristic pillar-shaped monument depicted here can be seen also on the MET hydria, where the closed foot of the woman corresponds in detail to the one on our vase. The Iliupersis Painter was a prolific and innovative artist, active just before mid 4th century B.C., whose work set the standard for the large, ornate-style vases of the second half of the same century: volute-kraters with plastic masks on the volutes, increased polychromy, complex floral ornament, multilevel compositions, mourners surrounding funerary naiskoi and stelei.