Getty Museum

Apulian Red-Figure Bell Krater Fragment

Date

about 375 B.C.

Medium

Terracotta

Culture

Greek (South Italian, Apulian)

Department

Vessels

Institution

Getty Museum

Part of a Dionysiac scene representing two women and Dionysos. Of the woman at the left, only the head, one hand, and a small part of one bent knee are preserved. Wearing a sphendone with a cross-hatch pattern and a white earring, she is seated to right. The fingers of her left hand grasp the top of a basket resting on the top of her knee and decorated with chevrons, zetoids, chevrons, dotted zigzags, flat esses, and a large elongated saltire cross. Next, a barefoot woman, with hair falling in long curls of dilute glaze and wearing a sleeveless chiton, dances with hands clasped in front of her head. Her left foot and a small part of her right leg are missing. Her chiton is marked with numerous fine fold-lines, small hooks, and two narrow black stripes down the side and at the bottom front. She also wears a white earring, a necklace, and a double bracelet on each wrist. Only the front half of Dionysos' head, his right arm and shoulder, and the upper part of his drapery-covered legs are preserved. He reclines to left on a couch of which only a small part, in added white, is visible behind the dancing woman's legs. The drapery is marked with hook-folds. Two long curly tresses of hair fall over his right shoulder, and on his head is a band decorated with a very small x-pattern and with a white fillet looped over the top and under the side. Much of the added white has flaked off from the bottom of his couch. In the upper left field is a reserved area with three black dots. Over the heads of the figures runs a trail of ivy on a white stem with white berry clusters between some of the leaves. Between the two women is part of an upright plant with white berries. On the outside of the mouth are diagonal addorsed palmettes; below, an egg pattern. This fragment joins to another in the Cahn collection (inv. 235), which shows the rest of the head of Dionysos, a hanging female mask with long hair and white face, and a youth beside a woman with a mirror. Adapted from Jentoft-Nilsen and Trendall, CVA Malibu 5 (1994)

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