Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 92-93.(Budapest, 2000)
SZILÁGYI, JÁNOS GYÖRGY: "Les Adieux". A Column-krater of the Syracuse Painter
"LES ADIEUX" A COLUMN-KRATER OF THE SYRACUSE PAINTER Nessuna religione accetta una crisi per definitiva (A. Brelich, P aides e parthenoi, 1969, 365) An Attic red-figure column-krater (figs. 5-7), in the Museum's collection for half a century, deserves detailed consideration neither for the special quality of its decoration nor for lack of master-attribution, but rather because the process of consideration may shed some light on questions which have become more pressing in recent decades than before. The vase, as Beazley saw 1 , was decorated by the Syracuse Painter. Inv.: 50.611; ht: 44,1 cm.; width of mouth with handle-plates: 43,8 cm.; diam. of foot: 19,6 cm. Unbroken; long crack on side B cuts across lower left corner of the picture-panel also; covered by a coarse layer of modern overpainting; slight chipping, mended in places, around edge of mouth. The top side of the wide rim is decorated with ornament painted in the black-figure technique: chain of hanging lotus-buds bound together at top by two, at bottom now and again by three curving tendrils with row of dots between them over the buds. The roughly rectangular plates that cover the cylindrical, slightly outward-tilted handle columns have black palmettes bounded by lyre-shaped tendrils set off by a double line from the row of buds along the rim, with two ivy leaves on each side. The overhang of the lip, slightly concave on the outside, is decorated with ivy, also black, framed at top and bottom by a horizontal line, as are the tongues that form the upper border of the pictures, the ivy bordering the panels at the sides, and the rays above the foot. On side A the neck has red-figure ornament: five enclosed standing palmettes, each with a tendril growing out of its right side and curling into a right-facing spiral; between each palmette a single leaf; on left side a leftward-bending spiral tendril, on the right, a horizontal spiral tendril closed at top by a lotus flower dangling off its upward-arching stem, with small leaf sprouting from base. On side B the neck is black, likewise inside of neck, handles, sides of handle-plates, body of vase outside the picture-panels, and the outer side of the stepped foot - its upper part angular in profile, the lower wider and torus-shaped. Reserved: inside of body, inner side of lip overhang, narrow band below the pictures, underside and lower part of lower degree of foot. The protagonist of the chief picture is clearly the male figure equipped as a hoplite. He wears a crested helmet of Attic type, with crest-holder decorated with a checker1 Beazley, ARV 2 , 1657.
