Column Crater

Necropolis of El Cabezo Lucero (Guardamar del Segura) Ceramic h: 34'5cm; w: 29'5 cm Iberian 460-450 BC.

Attic ceramic column crater in the red-figure style. The work of the Florentine painter. Restored. The inside of the foot and the resting surface are in reserve. The upper part of the lip is decorated with lotus buds and the outer rim with a garland of ivy leaves. Above the neck is a garland of stylised lotus buds. The scenes are framed on the sides by two dotted lines separated by vertical lines and on the top by a frieze of reeds.

Side A (main) depicts a meeting scene with four figures, all dressed in himation. On the left, a young man in profile to the right, holding a staff in his left hand. In the centre, two young men face each other. The one on the left holds a scyphus in his right hand and the one on the right holds a staff in his right hand. Behind, another young man in the same pose. On the B (secondary) side, only the upper part of the heads of two figures in profile have survived.

Craters were used in Athens at banquets to mix water and wine. In the Iberian world they appear both in settlements and in necropolises, where they form part of the grave goods, although in eastern Andalusia they are used as cinerary urns, a use that is only documented in Contestania in a tomb at El Cabezo Lucero. The artist to whom this piece is attributed, the Painter of Florence, belongs to the early classical period, to what J.D. Beazley called the "Boreas-Florence Group", made up of painters who decorated second-rate column kraters.
C.S.: 5756
ARANEGUI, C.,1993.
BEAZLEY, J.D., 1963.