L. D. Caskey, J. D. Beazley, Attic Vase Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

103. 03.815 CUP from Campania PLATE LIV

Diameter 0.224. A-B, AJA. 1915 pll. 25-6 (Swindler); I, VA. p. 131; I, Diepolder Der Penthesilea-Maler pl. 27, 2. I, goddess (?). A, youths and woman; B, the like. About 460 B.C., by the Penthesilea Painter (Swindler in AJA. 1915 pp. 402-3; VA. p. 131; Att. V. p. 276 no. 48; ARV. p. 587 no. 94).

Inside, a single figure: a woman standing frontal, the left leg slightly bent at the knee, the head turned to left. She wears a chiton, a himation fastened in 'Ionic' fashion on the right shoulder; her hair is in a sling, a spotted kerchief; she holds a sceptre in her right hand, and a large oinochoe in her left. The sceptre shows her of consequence, perhaps a goddess. The oinochoe might have helped to identify her, but I cannot tell who she is; nor do I know any other oinochoe of just this shape.

The floral head of the sceptre does not connect properly with the shaft, a piece of casualness that would have offended those of the painter's contemporaries who valued the precise tradition of the archaic period.

Outside, on each half, two youths accosting a woman. On A, the woman, seen frontal, moving forward, turns her head towards a youth who holds out a joint of meat towards her. We used to think this rather a prosaic gift. The other youth raises his right hand with thumb and index together, talking. Small parts of the fingers are repainted: the modern is omitted in our drawing. Parts of eye and ear are repainted too. The woman wears a chiton with a kolpos and over the breast a flounce; a himation is draped over both shoulders and the back of the hair, which is confined by a narrow stephane. The youths wear himatia and have sticks. B, unlike A, is in perfect preservation, and the picture is more attractive. The woman, again seen frontal, with the left knee slightly bent, turns her head and looks at a youth who is evidently shy. His attitude, with head bent and one hand raised to his cheek, is one of a family of attitudes that first appear in the early classic period and denote various states of mind — thought, concern, suspense, distress, regret, shame. The youth's stick drags behind him, held loosely in his left hand. His companion looks at the lady with less emotion, and there is assurance in the free way he holds his stick: of course she is not looking at him. The woman wears a chiton, and is well wrapped up in her himation, which she holds out a little at the side with her right hand; her hair is all but concealed under a saccos, which is ornamented with a circle and dot. This is an expressive figure, and its undulations contrast with the upright lines of the woman on A. One is inclined to think of her as the mistress and the woman on B as the maid: but they are doubtless both ἑταῖραι κόσμιαι.

An earlier counterpart to these scenes will be found on a small black-figured neck-amphora in Würzburg (Würzburg 223: Langlotz pl. 61).

At each handle, a design of six palmettes. There is no relief-contour in the figure-work, but the egg-pattern above the pictures is bounded by relief-lines. Brown inner markings. No white or red. The drawing is finer than in the two other cups by the same painter (nos. 101 and 102).

Very deep bowl, offset lip, heavy handles. The foot is modern, restored after that of Berlin 2547 (see below, no. 4). Besides the cup of type B, the Penthesilea Painter occasionally used a rarer type, a version of the 'Acrocup' (Bloesch F.A.S. pp. 141-4 and pll. 39-40). The Acrocup, descendant of the black-figure Droop Cup (JHS. 52 pp. 55-71, Ure), has an offset lip, a torus moulding at the junction of bowl and stem, a stout foot-plate, usually black at the side, and usually a stout stem and a deep bowl. Most Acrocups are black, but a few have red-figure pictures. The cup in Boston is one of four forming a group, differing in minor particulars, but closely interrelated and perhaps by one potter. Three of the four were decorated by the Penthesilea Painter, one by a follower.

• 1. Boston 03.815.
• 2. Berlin 2548. By the Penthesilea Painter (ARV. p. 587 no. 96; no. 12 in Bloesch's list, F.A.S. p. 142).
• 3. Paris, Cab. Méd. 820. B, Mon. 1 pl. 9, 1-2; Luynes pl. 27, whence (A-B) El. 1 pl. 40 and 2 pl. 52, and (A) Overbeck KM. pl. 24, 16. By the Penthesilea Painter (ARV. p. 587 no. 95).
• 4. Berlin 2547. A-B, AZ. 1848 pl. 21, 3-4; A, Licht ii p. 187; A, Bloesch F.A.S. pl. 39, 3. By the Wedding Painter (ARV. p. 606 no. 19); no. 11 in Bloesch's list of Acrocups (F.A.S. p. 142). The height, according to a note sent to Caskey by Neugebauer, is 0.155 (rather more than Furtwängler gives), the height of the foot 0.062.

One of the characteristics of this small class is the presence of a band of pattern on the bowl above the picture: egg-pattern in the Boston cup, egg-pattern of a different form in the Paris cup; a Doric cyma (a rectangular version of the egg-pattern) on the two others. The foot varies in detail. For the foot of Berlin 2547 see Bloesch pl. 39, 3. In Berlin 2548 the side of the foot-plate is a plain torus, reserved; below the fillet there is a reserved band at the top of the stem, survival of a feature of the Droop Cup; so also in the Paris cup, but there the side of the foot-plate is black and slightly lipped, with a reserved line at the top. The foot of the Boston cup is modern; but the base of the bowl is ancient, and preserves a traditional feature: the reserved band is descended from the light band, usually decorated with rays, which is regular in this part of the Droop Cup. Many Acrocups retain a vestige of this feature — the upper part of the fillet and the adjacent part of the bowl are reserved: but it is seldom so pronounced as here.

A small fragment in Adria, Adria B 474, comes from a fifth cup of our type, but all that remains is a piece of the offset lip with a little of the bowl: at the top of the bowl, egg-pattern; below the pattern, the top of a left-hand upper lateral palmette, circumscribed, with the mid-petal projecting. A still smaller fragment, with egg-pattern, in the Louvre is from a sixth such cup. A third fragment, which looks from the publication as if it were from a similar cup, is in Odessa (Zap. Od. 16, pl. 2, 1). What is preserved of the pictures is part of the right-hand figure on one half of the exterior, a naked boy; to left of him, sponge and aryballos suspended; to right of him, part of a handle-palmette; above, egg-pattern. Inscriptions give not only the end of a kalos-name, ...demos, but the end of the potter's name, ...gron or ...dron (Andron?). The painter may be a later follower of Douris (ARV. p. 911 no. 20), in any case the cup is contemporary with our four.¹

To the red-figured Acrocups mentioned by Bloesch add the following:

• Copenhagen 205 A. CV. pl. 161, 2. By the Painter of the Yale Cup (ARV. p. 553 no. 6).
• Copenhagen 205 B. CV. pl. 161, 1. By the Painter of the Yale Cup (ARV. p. 553 no. 7).
• Oxford 1946.50 (ex Marshall Brooks). Near the Group of Cambridge 74 (ARV. p. 555).
• London E 89. Manner of the Euaion Painter (ARV. p. 535 no. 19).
• Boston 00.354. I, Matz Naturpersonifikationen pl. 1. Sparte. Near the Jena Painter (ARV. p. 884 no. 7).
• New York 06.1021.186. Sambon Coll. Canessa p. 73; Richter and Hall pl. 167, 172 and pl. 181, 172.

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B. B. Shefton, Hesperia 31 (1962), p. 341, note 49; C. G. Boulter, Hesperia 32 (1963), p. 132, under no. 13; ARV2, pp. 887 (no. 145), 1673; Neumann 1965, pp. 130, 134 (fig. 66), 172 (note 37), 204 (note 506); P. Mingazzini, ASAtene 45-46 (1967-1968), pp. 344-345 (figs. 16-17), 346; Para., p. 428, no. 145; Lezzi-Hafter 1976, p. 37, note 150; Dover 1978, pp. 5, 221, no. R841; Koch-Harnack 1983, pp. 134, 254, cat. no. 98; W. Felten, 1987, in Alt-Agina, II, 1, p. 55, note 209; Beazley Addenda 2, p. 302; M. D. Stansbury O'Donnell, AJA 94 (1990), p. 234.