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VNION ACADEMIQVE INTERNATIONALE 0 RPVS VASOKVM AN :IQVORVM RUSSIA POCCH5I THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM FOCYL1APCTBEHHLII 3PMHTA)K ST. PETERSBURG CAHKT-HETEPBYPF LUCANIAN VASES by ELENA ANANICH <<L'ERMA>> di BRETSCHNEIDER - ROMA RUSSIA - FASCICULE viii THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM - FASCICULE I National Committee Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Russia Chairpersons Professor MIKHAIL PIOTROVSKY, Director of The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Arts Dr. ImNA DANILOVA, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow Committee Members Professor GEORGY VILINBAKHOV, Deputy Director of The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg ANNA TROFIMOVA, Head of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg Professor EDUARD FROLOV, Head of the Department of Ancient Greece and Rome, St. Petersburg State University IRINA ANTONOVA, Director of Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow Member of the Russian Academy of Education Professor GEORGY KNABE, Institute of the Humanities, State Humane University of Russia, Moscow Dr. OLGA TUGUSHEVA, Department of the Art and Archaeology of the Ancient World, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Russia. - Roma: <<L'ERMA>> di BRETSCHNEIDER. - v. ; 33 cm. - In testa al front.: Union Acaddmique Internationale. 8: The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. 1, Lucanian vases / by Elena Ananich. - Roma : <<L'ERMA>> di BRETSCHNEIDER, 2005. - 38 p., 47 P. di tav. : ill. ; 33 cm. - Tit. parallelo in russo ISBN 88-8265-322-6 CDD21. 738.382093 1. San Pietroburgo - Museo dell'Ermitage - Vasi antichi 2. Vasi antichi - Russia I. Ananich, Elena II. Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaz III. Union Acaddmique Internationale Translated from the Russian by Catherine Phillips Edited by Elisabetta Mangani Photographs by Natalia Antonova © THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM © COPYRIGHT 2005 <<L'ERMA>> di BRETSCHNEIDER - ROMA Via Cassiodoro, 19 Contents 7-8 Foreword 9 Programme to research and exhibit antique vases in the State Hermitage Museum 10-11 Introduction: South Italian Vases 12 Abbreviations 13-19 The workshop of the Pisticci and Amykos Painters 19-21 The Intermediate Group 21-27 The workshop of the Creusa and Dolon Painters 27-28 The Choephoroi Painter 28-31 The Roccanova Painter 3 1-32 The Primato Painter Indexes 33 Index of plates 34 Index of attributions to painters and groups 35 Index of proveniences 36 Index of former owners 37 Index of subjects 38 Concordance of museum inventory numbers with Trendall's numbers 1-47 Plates Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Sofia Boriskovskaya, Head of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, The State Hermitage Museum 1991-2001 FOREWORD With this volume of the Corpus Vasorurn Antiquorum The State Hermitage Museum embarks upon publication of its extensive collection of Antique vases. Justly considered to be one of the largest and most important in the world, this collection ranks - in terms of its quantity, outstanding quality and incredible variety - alongside those of the British Museum, the Louvre and the Vatican, and museums in Munich and Berlin. Today the Hermitage has some ten thousand Antique ceramic objects, examples of nearly all known trends and types from Mycenaean vessels to 4tI century red-glazed ceramics. Attic and South Italian vases are best represented, including many universally recognised masterpieces. Amphorae by Exekias and the Amasis Painter, a magnificent pelike with a swallow and a psykter with feasting hetaerae by Euphronius, elegant amphorae from Duris, the Regina Vasorum or Queen of Vases (a Cumaean hydria with relief figures of Eleusinian divinities) and many more. Also of exceptional interest is the provenance of the Hermitage vases, for most were acquired in the 19t1i century. Many of them derive from celebrated European collections and are today perceived as part of European cultural history, offering outstanding examples of historical' (old) restoration, as well as vivid evidence of the history of collecting and artistic taste. It was in 1834 that the basis of the Hermitage collection was laid, when more than a thousand Antique vases were acquired at auction in Rome as part of the collection of Dottore Pizzati, a connoisseur of Antiquities. For some twenty years some of these vases were to be housed in St. Petersburg's Academy of Sciences, until the opening in 1852 of the New Hermitage, a building specially designed by the German architect Leo von Klenze to make the imperial collection available to the public. That same year, 1852, Nicholas I ordered the acquisition of Antiquities from the Laval family, including more than three hundred vases. In 1861-62 Stepan Gedeonov, Director of the Imperial Hermitage, purchased in Rome the greater part of a vast collection belonging to a bankrupt collector of Antiquities, Marquis Gian Pietro Campana, thereby bringing in another five hundred Antique vases. This purchase effectively completed the formation of the core of the Hermitage collection, which had grown from nothing to become, in less than thirty years, a collection of international renown. Several hundred Antique vessels arrived in the late 19t} and early 2 oth century, some as purchases (including vases from the collection of A.A. Abaza, Minister of Finance) and others as gifts (such as those presented by A.G. Chertkov, a leading public figure). After the October Revolution of 1917 the Hermitage gained other several hundred vases from private collections, again through purchase and gift as well as through the nationalisation of private property. A further influx of vases was ensured from the 19th century until well into the 1990s by excavations conducted in the North Black Sea area, starting with the arrival in 1830 of the celebrated complex of finds from the Kul-Oba Barrow near Kerch. This was to be followed by dozens of outstanding examples of vase-painting, including whole vessels and fragments of Rhodos-Ionian ceramics from excavations of a settlement on the island of Berezan (in the north western part of the Black Sea coast) and red-figure Attic vases from FOREWORD excavations of barrows in the eastern Crimea, on the territory of the Bosporan Kingdom. Many of these came from the workshops of leading Athenian vase-painters such as the Marsyas Painter. Celebrated 5 tt1 century vases in the form of a sphinx and Aphrodite in a shell found on the site of a necropolis in ancient Phanagoria (on the Taman Peninsula) are true masterpieces of the arts of ancient pottery and vase-painting. One of the most numerous groups in the Hermitage collection that still offers plenty of scope for new research is a group of 4 th century painted Attic ceramics in the Kerch style. During recent years acquisitions have once more begun to be made: the museum acquired four South Italian vases from private hands, while a late Mycenaean painted amphora was presented by the Swiss collector George Ortiz. In launching this first volume, devoted to Lucanian vases, the State Hermitage Museum is taking but the initial steps in what promises to be a vast project: over the next ten to fifteen years we intend to bring together completed material and new research on the collection of Antique vases for publication in more than seventy volumes. Once brought onto the international scholarly arena, this huge body of material will contribute greatly to our understanding of the history and culture of Antiquity and thus to our knowledge of the humanities in general. PROFESSOR MIKHAIL PIOTROVSKY Director of The State Hermitage Museum Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Arts Joint Chairperson of the Russian National Committee of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum PROGRAMME TO RESEARCH AND EXHIBIT ANTIQUE VASES IN THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM Fate has decreed that the fame of the Hermitage's collection of antique vases runs far ahead of the extent of its publication. Paradoxically, despite the wide fame enjoyed by some of the most outstanding monuments, even of whole groups, the full extent of the riches in this collection remains little known to specialists outside Russian borders. Academician Ludolf Stephani produced the first brief description of the collection in the second half of the 19th century; this was then developed and added to in the early 20th century by Oskar Waldhauer, who grouped the vases according to the system then in use amongst specialists. Of all the Hermitage's vases, only a small part has been published since (frequently without any reproductions) in the fundamental works of John Beazley, Arthur Dale Trendall, Alexander Cambitoglou, Ian McPhee and Lidia Forti. Even publications such as the excellent catalogues of red- and black-figure Attic vases (Anna Peredolskaya, Leningrad, 1967; Ksenia Gorbunova, Leningrad, 1983) and a number of articles devoted to individual vases and painters (often in the Hermitage's own publications, such as the Reports of The State Hermitage Museum and the Papers of the State Hermitage Museum), have covered only a small (if the best) part of the collection. Moreover, being in Russian, they are accessible only to a small circle of specialists. Nor are the impressive results of archaeological excavations in the North Black Sea area always known to the wider world. For instance, partial publication of the collection of vases in the Kerch style was undertaken in the 1930s by Karl Schefold, but since then no attempts have been made to update his work with new, previously unpublished. Our participation in the publication of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum is only part of an extensive programme encompassing closely related projects intended to ensure not only full study of the whole collection and preparation of material for the relevant volumes, but also the re-presentation of the Museum's permanent displays and publication of catalogues and books to accompany new exhibitions. Three of the New Hermitage building's most handsome rooms are given over almost entirely to antique vases.