142. 89.272 (R. 389) CUP from Vulci PLATE LXXXI, 3 and PLATE LXXX, 2
Diameter 0.332, height 0.14. Gerhard AV. pl. 282; AZ. 1885 pl. 18 and pl. 19, 1 (Wernicke); the shape, Caskey G. p. 183 fig. 137. I, youth and boy; A-B, men and boys. About 490-480 B.C., by Makron (Wernicke in AZ. 1885 pp. 259-61; Hartwig p. 295 no.5; Edward Robinson p. 142; VA. p. 105 no. 69; Att. V. p. 217 no. 95; ARV.1 p. 310 no. 143; ARV.2 p. 472 no. 200). The cup is of Type B. The potter-work is by Hieron. The preservation is not good. Inside, a youth, leaning on his stick, addresses a boy. Both wear himatia, and the boy is closely wrapped up in his. A chip to right of the youth's back. The wreaths are done in red. Outside, three pairs on each half. On B, the boys stand still, wrapped in their himatia, and do not react. The men lean on their sticks, and two of them speak, the third looks only. What we call A is the more varied half. In the middle group, the boy sets his foot forward in an attitude of great assurance; his right hand is no longer concealed in his himation but thrust out: he is evidently speaking and putting his own point of view. The man holds a flower. In the left-hand group, the boy, who seems a little older than his companions, and wears his himation in the same way as the men, also shows assurance. The man holds a net-bag, the boy a sprig in one hand, and in the other a special sort of staff: it is one of those long arrows which we see used as walking-sticks by boys on other vases. The boy Herakles has one on the skyphos by the Pistoxenos Painter in Schwerin; and so has a boy on a cup by Makron, somewhat earlier than ours, in Munich, and another on an oinochoe by the Tarquinia Painter in the Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen.1 In the third group, on the right of the picture, the youngest boy shrinks and turns away. The himation is loosely draped over his shoulders and held with both hands. The left foot is extended frontal. The head must have been turned to the right. The motive of the boy turning away and looking round occurs four times on a cup by Makron in Villa Giulia.2 Relief-contours throughout. Red for flowers and wreaths. The right arm of the man in the left-hand group on A, as the incised sketch shows, was originally meant to be raised. The cup is in Makron's fully developed style.F. Brommer 1979a, p. 42; M. Stadler, Hefte des archäologischen Seminars der Universität Bern 7 (1981), pp. 32-34; Kurtz & Sparkes 1982, pp. 29, 32, 50 (D. von Bothmer); Koch-Harnack 1983, pp. 159 (fig. 81), 256, cat. no. 124; C. Isler-Kerényi, AntK 27 (1984), p. 158, note 46; Parthenon-Kongress, p. 78 (T. Seki); M. Meyer, JdI 103 (1988), pp. 94 (note 38), 95 (fig. 3), 112 (fig. 25), 113; Beazley Addenda 2, p. 246; CVA, Leiden, 4, p. 9, under no. PC 94 (M. F. Vos).