Antiquities and Ancient Art

Provenance:

D.O. collection, South Germany.

Gorny & Mosch, Munich, Auktion 194, 14 December 2010, Lot 332.

Royal Athena Galleries, New York, 2012 (Art of the Ancient World, Vol. XXIII, no. 113).

Satyrs dutifully toil at Dionysos’ harvest on the krater’s obverse: at the left, one tramples grapes within a large basket elevated on a footstool or table; to the right, a second shoulders an open sack of the fruit. Dionysos stands between them, head turned to the right, grasping the haft of a thyrsos in his left hand and a large kantharos in the right. He is enveloped within a tunic and voluminous mantle, his beard bushy, and long hair bound up in a broad fillet from which two tendrils escape. The choice of subject matter is most appropriate for a krater, the large open-mouthed vase used for mixing wine and water at the symposium. The reverse shows three standing youths (summarily rendered), each swathed in his mantle alternately leaning on a staff and gesticulating. A strigil is suspended in the field. Beneath the rim on each side, a bristling boar stands between two crouching lions.

The Painter of the Louvre Centauromachy was a prolific painter active at the end of the Early Classical period. His workshop specialized in large vases, especially favoring the column-krater which comprises nearly half of his attributed works, including the masterpiece in Paris (Louvre G 367) after which Beazley named him. That vase also features a trio of draped youths on the reverse, a stock method of reverse decoration the painter deployed frequently.