Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 92-93.(Budapest, 2000)

SZILÁGYI, JÁNOS GYÖRGY: "Les Adieux". A Column-krater of the Syracuse Painter

diffusion in the Late Orientalizing period of a version of the krater characterized mostly by its modest quality and mediocre artistic standards is tied to the formation of a new middle class. The great social transformations which took place in Etruria in the years around 550 led to shifts in customs and tastes; one of these changes was a cessation or at least rapid decline in demand for kraters for use by the middle class of the Etruscan centres as tableware or grave-gifts. The phenomenon is general in Etruria; one or two masterpieces here and there provide an exception; their number increased, clearly, by more valuable bronze specimens. In the second half of the century, the ceramists of Etruscan black-figure that supplanted Etrusco-Corinthian - masters of the Pontic vases, painters of the Ivy Leaf and La Tolfa Groups and the Caeretan hydriae - did not produce or decorate kraters at all, and the shape has almost no place for at least three decades in the material record of the Attic pottery imports, which peaked in South Etruria in the last third of the century.

65 It seems plausible that the decline in Etruscan demand can be invoked as an explanation, partial at least, of why hardly a single krater was produced at this time in the workshops of Attica. This is apparently confirmed by the fact that the shape is not to be found either among the works of artists like the Affecter or the Priamos Painter who worked primarily with Etruscan purchasers in mind, nor, most strikingly, at all among the products of the highly prolific workshop of Nikosthenes, who was well-informed about the Etruscan market and reacted most sensitively to its changing demands.

66 The first signs of a change appear, in Etruria as in Athens, after the invention of redfigure.

67 The vases of the Leagros Group and its contemporaries as well as those of the first generation of red-figure painters - both the unassuming column-krater and the calyx- and volute-krater - found their way to Etruria, where their appearance was followed around the tum of the century by sparse local black-figure imitations - a handful of column-kraters by the Micali Painter (who had never decorated this shape at the 65 This general picture is not altered by the few known exceptions like a piece from Tarquinia (Tronchetti, C, Ceramica attica a figure nere, Grandi vasi [Materiali del Mus. Arch. Naz. di Tarquinia], Roma 1983, 57-58, no. 18, pi. 19) or the Würzburg vase of the Bucci Painter found at Vulci (Beazley, Para 137, 7bis). We must, however, use caution: among others the greater part of Mengarelli's excavations in Caere (see Pace, B., MonAnt 42 [1955] 20), a large mass of grave material from Vulci, and the black-figure vases from Gravisca still await publication. Even the publication of the material excavated at present may significantly change, either positively or negatively, the picture drawn here and in subsequent pages. Therefore our survey makes no claims beyond a sketchy summary of the basic tendencies. 66 At present only a single volute-krater made in his workshop is known: Tosto, V., The Black-figure Pottery signed NIKOZ&ENEZELIOIEIEN, Amsterdam 1999, 110-111. 67 The most exhaustive and, to date, the most widely-used collection of material are Beazley's two works and their supplementary volume {ABV, ARV

2 and Para). Just how inadequate these are, in accordance with their conception and purpose, for the quantitative appreciation of the Attic production and its Etruscan export, can be seen from a single example: Beazley knew the material in the Tarquinia museum well, but, of the eight Attic black-figure column-kraters in the collection, mentions only one in ABV (see Tronchetti, op. cit. [n.65] 143; the only exception is the work of the Acheloos Painter, no. 43 = Beazley, ABV, 384, 23). G. Sassatelli pointed to the problem in Crise et transformation des sociétés archaïques de l'Italie antique au V

e s. av. J.-C. (Atti Rome 1987), Rome 1990, 85-86.