The Kleophrades Painter
Michael Padgett, Princeton University

21. Shapes: Cups

The Kleophrades Painter was primarily a pot-painter, but his cups are among his best works. The two early kylikes in Paris, including the one with the signature of the potter Kleophrades, are giants, some half a meter across.[107] On the signed cup, the exterior is a vigorous Amazonomachy with Herakles; inside, a warrior is donning greaves. The other Paris cup is devoted entirely to the deeds of Theseus: inside, Theseus and Kerkyon (both names inscribed); outside, the fights with Sinis, Skiron, Prokrustes, the Minotaur, and the Bull of Marathon.[108] The muscular hero and his victims are drawn in the painter's early style, with hooked clavicles and boldly outlined anatomy, including lips defined with almost frightening clarity. The frames and groundlines of both cups consist of simple key-pattern, except for the tondo of the Theseus cup, which has a true maeander. The latter pattern is used again (with blackened cross-squares) on a fragmentary kylix, London E 73, one of only two known "zone-cups" of type C, with the inner lip offset and a figured frieze circling the tondo.[109] This is a later work of around 480 or so and shows the painter at his best. On either side, watched by Athena, a Greek hero has beaten an Olympian's son and will next attack the divine parent. On one side, Herakles has killed Kyknos and will next turn on Ares; on the other, Diomedes has wounded Aeneas and will soon wound the Trojan's mother, Eos, who rushes to her son's rescue. The hubristic theme is continued in the tondo, where Peleus wrestles with the divine Thetis. In the encircling zone, Thetis' sisters rush to tell the news to their father Nereus and to Triton, both of whom are labeled by inscription, as are Peleus and Thetis, and all of the exterior figures.

108. On a much later cup, Bologna PU 270 (ARV2, 192, 107), Theseus again confronts all of these foes except Sinis.

109. ARV2, 192, 106; see J. Boardman, "The Kleophrades Painter's Cup in London," GettyMusJ 1 (1974) 7-14. The only other zone-cup of type C is Malibu 83.AE.362, signed by Euphronios as potter and painted by Onesimos; see Williams 1991, 41-64 (particularly pp. 47-49).