Friday 22 November 2013

The ex-Steinhardt Phiale

I have been looking at the catalogue for Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome (Los Angeles, 2013). It includes, as I have noted elsewhere, the ex-Steinhardt gold phiale. The catalogue gives little away: 'From near Caltavuturo' and 'the phiale of Caltavuturo'. There is no mention of the fact that the phiale was seized in November 1995 and returned to Italy in 2000.

The catalogue apparently seems unaware of Michael Vickers and David Gill, Artful Crafts: Ancient Greek Silverware and Pottery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). The authors of the catalogue would have found a discussion of the weights of gold phialai (p. 43) that would have been relevant to the inscription. A comparable piece is the gold phiale in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art apparently purchased from Robert Hecht.

Also missing in the catalogue entry are the references to the publication of the phiale in SEG 39 (1989) 1034 and by Giacomo Manganaro.

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