Collection Online as of April 1, 2023

Fragment of a Red-Figure Bell-Krater or Calyx-Krater (Mixing Vessel): Female Head (Aglauros)

c. 460–450 BC

attributed to Nausicaa Painter

(also known as Polygnotos III; Greek, Attic, active c. 460–440 BC)

Greek, Attic

Ceramic

Overall: 6.8 x 7.5 cm (2 11/16 x 2 15/16 in.)

Gift of Frances W. Ingalls 1992.369

Location

102B Greek

Fun Fact

An inscription identifies this woman as Aglauros, an Athenian princess.

Description

Broken from the upper wall of a large mixing vessel, this fragment shows the head of a woman wearing an earring and an elaborate ribbon in her hair. A faint inscription identifies her as Aglauros, a daughter of Kekrops, the mythical first king of Athens. Although worshipped in a shrine near the Acropolis, Aglauros appears quite rarely in Athenian art, usually with her sisters at the birth of Erichthonios, a future king.

Inscriptions

Inscription

inscription

Provenance

Jacob Hirsch, Geneva, Switzerland

?-1992

Eileen B. Ingalls (1903-1996), Cleveland, OH, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art

1992-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Citations

Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive. BAPD 214656 www.beazley.ox.ac.uk

Brommer, Vasenlisten, 258, B 1, s.v. "A"; Enciclopedia dell'arte antica classica e orientale 1 (1958). p. 140

Beazley, J. D. Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963. p. 1108, no. 17.

Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (LIMC). Zürich: Artemis, 1981. 286, no. 2

"1993 Annual Report." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (1994). p. 158 www.jstor.org

Neils, J. "Lost and Found," CMA Members Magazine (February 1995). p. 8-9 archive.org

Neils, Jenifer, and Gisela Walberg. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, OH]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000. p. 33, pl. 70

Mannack, Thomas. The Late Mannerists in Athenian Vase-Painting. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. P. 25, Fig. 4.1, p. 138, N. 17.