Lucanian Red-figure Nestoris

Red-figure vase painting developed in Athens about 525 BC. For the following century the masters of Athens pursued the technique with almost no competition. From about 430 BC however, vase painters and potters moved from Athens (entangled in a severe war with Sparta) to southern Italy, where Metapontion in Lucania became one of the Greek centres of vase-painting. In spite of its Greek name, the nestoris is not Greek in origin. It was named in the nineteenth century after Nestor, whose goblet as it was described in Homer's Iliad resembled this form. However, it is actually a variation of a vase type of the Messapii, the inhabitants of the peninsula of Salento, in the south-eastern corner of Italy. The Greek potters were thus in contact with the local populace, and learnt from them, adapting to their needs. Though the form of the vase is of local origin, it is decorated with a typically Greek scene. In the middle sits the young god Dionysos, holding the thyrsus, a staff adorned with ivy leaves. On the left a female figure offers him a cup of wine. At the right edge of the scene a satyr leaning on a column serves to emphasis the Dionysian mood. Yet the ribbon encircling the two columns suggests that the scene is set before a tomb, in a burial-ground. In this case the image may depict the welcoming of the deceased into Dionysos's entourage, a religious belief popular in southern Italy. The vase may originally have been intended as a grave good, perhaps for the very female figure in the design. Szilvia Lakatos