LOT 0081

Greek Epichyses with Reclining Female Holding a Patera

APULIAN, 4TH CENTURY B.C.

6 1/2 in. (229 grams, 16.5 cm).

Enlivened with crimson, ochre and white slip; with rays on the neck, the shoulder showing a lady of fashion lying, adorned with earrings and bracelets, holding a patera in her right hand, and foliate sprigs in the field; palmette at the base of the handle, and grape vine on the cotton reel body.

Ex Ancient Art Shop, Windsor, UK, in the 1990s.
Heads and Tales exhibition, Piccadilly, London, 2002.
From the collection of PA, Hertfordshire, UK.

Cf. similar vessel in the British Museum, accession no.1978.0414.38), a large Apulian epichyses, in Nicol, W., A Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum, London, 1851-1870, no.1524; cf. also Jentoft-Nilsen, M.R., Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, The Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, 1990, pls.173-174, for similar.

Stretched-out figures of women or Eros appear frequently on the shoulders of epichyseis in the Menzies group. This epichyseis substituted the image of a woman to that of Eros, sitting nude in other identical vessels on a dotted white and white-stripe ground line with his legs outstretched before him. The woman holds in his right hand a patera, exactly as the Eros on the epichyses in the Getty Museum. The position of the woman, the treatment of the dress and the position of the legs, as well as the palmette decoration and adjuncts would suggest to associate the vase with the Menzies Group.