Monumental Apulian Loutrophoros of the Baltimore Painter

Culture: Greek/Apulia

Period: 330-320 B.C.

Material: Terracotta

Dimensions: 81.3 cm high

Price: 48 000 Euro

Ref: 2634

Provenance: With gallery Antike Kunst Palladion in Basel, Switzerland prior to 1990. In 2002 with Galerie Jürgen Haering in Freiburg, Germany. There acquired by the Rhenish collection H. B. On 31 Mai 2018 in the auction Villa Griesebach, lot 276. The provenance was checked by the chamber court Berlin and confirmed as legal (file number 4Ws 1-3/20-151 AR 58/19).

Condition: The separately worked out handles were affixed on the shoulder and missing today. Otherwise intact!

Description: Magnificent red-figure loutrophoros from the workshop of the Baltimore Painter in Canosa. The monumental vase to collect water stands on a high profiled foot ring and has a concave-cylindrical body. The shoulder is protruding and merges into a long neck, where the bowl-shaped spout sits. The painting, with an elaborate application of white, yellow and red for the details, depicts in the front a naiskos with a young woman to the left. She is the deceased, whom the magnificent vase is dedicated to. She wears a long white gown with a red braid and a belonging cape, which she has thrown over the left arm and holds with the right hand. Her young age is indicated by the depicted attributes of a perfume alabastron, dove and ball in the naiskos. Her tomb stele with a black mourning ribbon is painted in the back, surrounded by young women and men, who offer sacrifices. Outside of the naiskos are also two young men and women with attributes for a beautiful life, who are companions of the deceased. The shoulder is surrounded by a laurel wreath with a central rosette. On the shoulder itself is the head of Aphrodite to the left looking at a calyx surrounded by abundant flower decoration and in the back a winged woman’s head, possibly Iris, the companion to the otherworld. Of high quality is also the lozenge pattern on the neck. The vertical lozenges are applied tricolour with dashed borders and evenly distributed. Above palmettes, at the bottom of the bowl black tongues and on the rim encircling egg-dart decoration.