Title: Ancient luxury Ware Magna Graecia Terracotta krater Wine Art Pottery
Shipping: $29.00
Artist: N/A
Period: Antiquity
History: N/A
Origin: Southern Europe > Italy
Condition: Museum Quality
Item Date: N/A
Item ID: 6415
Apulian Red-Figure Bell Krater Mediterranean: Origin: Magna Graecia Circa: 400 BC to 300 BC Dimensions: 14" (35.6cm) high x 14" (35.6cm) wide Catalogue: V4 Collection: Classical Medium: Terracotta: On one side of this splendid krater, originally used for the mixing and serving of wines, a young woman and a nude man face each other across a funerary stele. This may represent a scene of sacrifice at a tomb, where the young man personifies the spirit of the deceased, or it perhaps depicts the mythological meeting of Orestes and Electra at the tomb of their father, Agamemnon. The other side shows two youths conversing. Such vessels were the luxury ware of the Classical age, cherished in life and buried for the eternal pleasure of their owners. As we delight in its beauty today, we share that feeling with people who lived many centuries ago.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery_of_ancient_Greece
Because of its relative durability, pottery comprises a large part of the archaeological record of Ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it (some 100,000 vases are recorded in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum), it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society. Little survives, for example, of ancient Greek painting except for what is found on the earthenware in everyday use, so we must trace the development of Greek art through its vestiges on a derivative art form. Nevertheless the shards of pots discarded or buried in the 1st millennium BC are still the best guide we have to the customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks.
