Greek Apulian Red-Figure Oinochoe, ex-Christie's

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Fine Ethnographic / Asian / Ancient Art

By Artemis Gallery

May 10, 2018

Set Reminder 2018-05-10 10:00:00 2018-05-10 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Fine Ethnographic / Asian / Ancient Art https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/fine-ethnographic-asian-ancient-art-3213
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• Lot Description
  Magna Graecia, Apulia, ca. 340 to 320 BCE. A gorgeous oinochoe with a curvaceous body, a tiered base, trefoil lip, and high ribbed strap handle, finely painted via the red-figure technique. The figural program includes a nude youth seated on his garment, holding a staff and phiale, facing left toward a draped female with one exposed breast. Seated on a rock, holding a fan and a grape cluster, the female is bedecked with a beaded saccos, two strands of pearls around her neck, and multiple bracelets. All the wonderful details were created in added/fugitive white and yellow pigments. Size: 13.625" H (34.6 cm); 14.25" H (36.2 cm) on included custom stand. Size: 13.5" H (34.3 cm); 14.75" H (37.5 cm) on included custom stand.
  
  In addition to this wonderful iconography is an extensive decorative program featuring from top to bottom: slender, equidistantly frets on the neck, a band of ovalo on the shoulder, a complex tendriled palmette motif beneath the ribbed handle, and finally a wave register beneath the figural imagery, continuing all around the vessel.
  
  Perhaps the most exciting innovation in Greek vase painting was the red-figure technique, invented in Athens around 525 BCE and beloved by other artists of Magna Graecia. The red-figure technique allowed for much greater flexibility as opposed to the black-figure technique, for now the artist could use a soft, pliable brush rather than a rigid metal graver to delineate interior details, play with the thickness of the lines, as well as build up or dilute glazes to create chromatic effects. The painter would create figures by outlining them in the natural red of the vase, and then enrich these figural forms with black lines to suggest volume, at times perspectival depth, and movement, bringing those silhouettes and their environs to life. Beyond this, fugitive pigments made it possible for the artist to create additional layers of interest and detail as we see in this example.
  
  Provenance: private Davis collection, Houston, Texas, USA; ex-Christie's December 13, 2013 New York Antiquities Auction, part of lot 96; ex-Christie's December 11, 2003 Antiquities Auction, New York, lot 165; ex-Randall Steinmeyer collection, Connecticut, USA collection; ex-private New York, New York, USA collection, acquired in Italy in the early 1900s, thence by descent
  
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  #132888

  Condition

  Chips to rim of trefoil spout. Nicks to periphery of base. The handle was repaired from two pieces and reattached with a chip to the lower section. Normal surface wear with slight pigment losses as shown, but most of the impressive painted program remains. Some sediment seems to be contained inside the vessel. The black ground has attained a marvelous iridescence. The vessel is attached to a decorative, molded terracotta stand which was created later than the vessel itself.
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