As a result of the agreement negotiated by Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Ministero per I Beni Culturali e Ambientali, the Republic of Italy is lending the Metropolitan Museum three ancient Greek vases for a period of four years.
Supplementing the Laconian drinking cup already on loan (since November 2006), the three additional pieces †a jug in the shape of a young woman’s head (end of Sixth Century BC); a cup signed by the potter Euxitheos and the painter Oltos, depicting the assembly of gods on Mount Olympos (515‵10 BC); and a vase of the Fourth Century BC showing Oedipus solving the riddle of the sphinx †recently went on view among related works in the museum’s Greek and Roman Galleries.
These loans come to the Met in exchange for the return of the Euphronios krater to Italy.
The terra cotta drinking vessel in the shape of a young woman’s head was made in Athens at the turn of the Sixth to Fifth Century BC, and is signed by the potter Charinos. The woman’s hair is gathered in an elaborately decorated snood with a meticulously executed frieze of animals, real and mythological, that is meant to be understood as woven in. Her physiognomy and highly ornamented snood suggest a person of some standing. Vessels like this would have been used in symposia, the gatherings of Athenian men that included wine, music and women who were professional entertainers.
The cup signed by the potter Euxitheos and the painter Oltos, and dated about 515‵10 BC, is a virtuoso achievement. The cup’s unusually large size †20½ inches in diameter †occurs in a number of works exported from Athens to the Italian peninsula in the Archaic and Classical periods. A long graffito in Etruscan letters on the underside of the cup’s foot indicates that the work was dedicated to the sons of Zeus, Castor and Pollux. Because of its large scale, the cup would have been unwieldy for use in a symposium. It may have been created to be a magnificent offering.
The bell-krater from the south Italian region of Paestum and dated to the third quarter of the Fourth Century BC is attributed to Python, one of the leading painters of this regional school. The work is an important example of the so-called phlyax vases, named after a type of farce that parodied the weighty themes and traditional personages of mythology and drama, and shows one of the most serious and dramatic episodes in classical Greek drama: Oedipus solving the riddle of the sphinx.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is at 1000 Fifth Avenue. For information, 212-570-3951 or www.metmuseum.org .
