Tuesday, 25 May 2010

Mud on the krater

Christos Tsirogiannis is undertaking some remarkable research on the scale of looting in countries bordering the Mediterranean. He recently showed me the Polaroid of an Attic red-figured volute-krater with a Dionysiac scene. You can still see mud adhering to parts of the rim. The image comes from the Medici Dossier seized in the Geneva Freeport.

The krater appears to have been ripped from the ground and quickly snapped before (presumably) being cleaned up ("restored") and sold on. The complete nature suggests that it came from a funerary context.

What else was found in the tomb? Was it an inhumation? What was the gender of the primary burial? Or was it a multiple burial? Was this the only pot with a Dionysiac scene?

Image
Volute-krater illustrated in the Medici Dossier

Bookmark and Share so Your Real Friends Know that You Know

No comments:

Drawing attention to "provenance" at the Met

Courtesy of Christos Tsirogiannis One of largest group of repatriated material from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was dervied fr...