The Kleophrades Painter
Michael Padgett, Princeton University

17. Shapes: Pelikai

The painter's pelikai, both framed and unframed, are placed by Becker in her Class II, which also includes two of the earliest works of the Berlin Painter.[86] The latter must date about 500 or a little earlier, while those of the Kleophrades Painter are considerably later, a circumstance difficult to explain.[87] Most of those by the Kleophrades Painter have pictures framed above and below by a key-pattern and laterally by a pomegranate-net, the latter, like the single or addorsed palmettes under the handles, a common feature on pelikai of the late 480s and 470s.[88] From what one can tell (two are fragmentary, one poorly published), the pelikai with unframed figures have maeander-and-box groundlines.

Illustration 100

Illustration 101

With the exception of the satyr on a vase from Delos (ARV2, 185, 29), and the goddesses on Berlin F 2170 (Illustration 100 and Illustration 101; ARV2, 185, 28), possibly Hera and Aphrodite, the subjects of the painter's pelikai are all genre: athletes and trainers, komasts, courting males. The oil-seller on Agrigento 34 (ARV2, 185, 30) continues a tradition of representing this subject on pelikai.[89]

86. Becker 1977, vol. I, 5-6, vol. II, 3-6. The two by the Berlin Painter are Vienna 3725 and Florence 3985 (ARV2, 204, 109-110).

87. Are we to imagine that the potter in the Pioneer workshop who made the vases for the young Berlin Painter found later employment in the shop of the Kleophrades Painter? If so, where are the vases he made in the intervening years?

88.The unframed pelike Berlin F 2170 has black palmettes beneath the handles (Illustration 102), like those below the handles of Würzburg L 507 (Illustration 103), a very early amphora of type A.

Illustration 102

Illustration 103