Origins of the Berlin Painter

The vase illustrated in pll. Vl–IX(a) and figs, 1 and 2 is a red-figure volute-krater belonging to the Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology at Cambridge, and now deposited on loan at the Fitzwilliam Museum. It came to the Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology in 1886 with the Barrett Collection, but nothing further is known of its history. It was attributed to the Berlin Painter by Professor J. D. Beazley in Attische Vasenmaler, and in his Berliner Maler he classed it among the half-dozen earliest works of the master. Until recently it was severely repainted, but has now been cleaned. Much is missing; the surface is rubbed, and the restorer had not hesitated to plane away the edges of fragments where he could not arrange a clean fit; but it remains a fine and interesting piece.Modern are: foot, with much of the lower part, including most of the rayed area and lower part of reverse figure; volute of one handle; rim, upper register and most of lower register of neck on obverse; patches on body and reverse neck (evident in photographs). The foot has been restored on the model of a complete volute-krater decorated by the same artist some years later. In the body pictures relief-contour is used rather sparingly, as usual in this artist's work; the small figures on the neck, like those on the London volute-krater, show a much fuller use of it. Thinned glaze is used for the usual inner body-markings; on the youth on B, however, they have all been obliterated, except for the end of one line on the back and of one on the upper arm. On this figure it is also used for drapery folds running from the righthand contour, both in the area about the waist and across the leg.