The KleophradesPainter
Michael Padgett, Princeton University

9. Later Depictions of the Return of Hephaistos

The Kleophrades Painter later returned to this subject on a calyx-krater in the Louvre, again arranging his figures in an uninterrupted procession (Louvre G 162).[57] Hephaistos is again seated on an ithyphallic donkey, but this time he rides side-saddle and is accompanied not only by Dionysos and the satyrs, but also by ecstatic maenads. Hermes himself leads the procession to the seated Hera, still trapped on her throne. On this later work of about 490 B.C., the inscriptions are no longer meaningless ("Hermes" and "Hephaistos"), but are short and to the point. The Kleophrades Painter was never garrulous. He has left no kalos-inscriptions naming a particular youth, though he often wrote "kalos" or "kalos ei" ("You are handsome").

Illustration 64

The epic line "as once in Tiryns...," declaimed by the rhapsode on the neck-amphora London E 270 (ARV2, 183, 15), is an unusual departure for the painter; it has recently been suggested that he is not a rhapsode at all, but an aulodes, who is singing to the music of the flute-player on the reverse (Illustration 64). [58]