Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 92-93.(Budapest, 2000)
SZILÁGYI, JÁNOS GYÖRGY: "Les Adieux". A Column-krater of the Syracuse Painter
market for imported Athenian vases, 73 can claim at the present time with certainty not more than ten of the some two hundred and fifty column-kraters imported to Italy in the period. 74 One of these is the Budapest vase of the Syracuse Painter. At Vulci, the most important market for Attic vases outside Athens itself, red-figure Athenian column-kraters from the first half of the fifth century are completely missing; 75 this may nevertheless be explained not only by the above-mentioned general cause, but by particular local features also. Vulci was home to the Praxias Group, in whose workshop, attached directly to that of the Micali painter, the Etruscan masters, who adopted the red-figure technique only reluctantly, produced vases decorated in added red ("Six technique"). The new Athenian fashion was quickly noticed in the workshop; moreover, as testified by the fifteen or so column-kraters known from the years between 490-460, the Etruscan ceramists made attempts to imitate their Athenian models not only as regards the style of the pictures, but also in the ornament, exactly following the Athenian import pieces which, as we have seen, use black-figure for subsidiary decoration (figs. 14-15). 76 The kraters of the Praxias Group went principally but not exclusively to meet the needs of the Vulci market; at least one of them has been found in a grave at Caere. 77 This fact warns us that a further level of interpretation may be considered in connection with the Budapest vase, one closely related to the mentioned change in the ideology attached in Etruria to the krater. Etruria, according to the general tendency, was not the main market for the trade in Early Classical Attic kraters; Spina rather, the wealthy Greek cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily and their hinterland, and to a lesser degree Campania had taken the lead. Angela Pontrandolfo has called attention to the fact that these kraters with figurai decoration received a new function in this areas that they had never possessed in Athens: they were used as cinerary urns in wealthier graves. 78 Whether this became the rule in 73 The statistics for pottery-imports are based largely on Beazley's books, who listed, however, only the vases attributed to one of his masters, groups, or classes (see n.67, and, with a survey of the most recent literature Hannestad, L., ActaArch 59 [ 1988J 113-115). It seems that only Boardman's treatment, quite apart from its methodological innovativeness, went beyond Beazley's lists, extending the material considered to include other vases preserved in the major museums (Boardman, J., Expedition 21 f 1979] 4, 33-39; on his sources 38); this important point was ignored by Guermandi, who tried to extend his own survey to the whole of the Spina material {op. cit. [n.69]), while pointing to the methodological errors in earlier statistics. That the older conception of a dramatic reduction in Attic pottery imports to Etruria after 475 is in need of revision was most recently bom out by the graphs in Kracht, P., Studien zu den griechischetruskischen Handelsbeziehungen vom 7. bis 4. Jh. v. Chr., Bochum 1991, based on Beazley's works. 74 Beazley, ARV 2 , 543,42; 569,47; Passi Pitcher. L., in G Ii Etruschi e Cerveteri, op. cit. (n.71) 198199. no. 20; Paribeni, E., in Pyrgi I (NSc 1970, II Suppl.), 250 and fig. 176, nos. 4 and 6; 462-463, fig. 368, nos. 14 and 15. Perhaps two fragmentary pieces also belong in this group: MonAnt 42 (1955) 652,1 (inv. 49319) and 662, tomb 192,2 (inv. 49279). 7i Beazley, ARV 2 , mentions only a few calyx-kraters: 601,20; 633,6. 76 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 96.9.29; Beazley, EVP, 306,45 quater. I wish to thank Dietrich von Bothmer for his obliging kindness in sending the photographs reproduced here. 77 Olivotto, V., Caere, Necropoli di Monte Abbatone (Not. Milano, Suppl. XII), Milano 1994, 74-76 (with further bibliography) and figs. 153-156. 75 Pontrandolfo, A., in In vino Veritas (ed. O. Murray - M. Tecusan), London 1995, 193.1 was not able at the time of writing to obtain J. de La Genière 's article, cited there (Les usages du cratère, REA 89 [1987] 271-277), but see Each, op. cit. (n.28) 205, n. 22. La Genière also points out (207) that the krater was not the only Attic vase shape to be used as ossuary in Cerveteri.
