Cratera Apulia, 4th-3rd c. BC.

Crater of volutes. Apulia. Magna Grecia. Southern Italy, late fourth-third century BC.
Pottery worked on a potter's wheel, oxidizing firing, overpainted.
In very good state of preservation. It has undergone a process of cleaning and restoration.
Measurements: 51 cm (height) x 19 cm (diameter mouth).
Crater of pale orange clay scrolls covered with bright reddish ochre engobe with traces of paint in white and pinkish colors. On the front there is what seems to be part of an Ionic naiskos (temple) with triangular pediment, where we see a character that seems to be sitting on a footstool and could be fanning himself, following the same type of decoration as other craters of Greek ceramics in which this same scenic motif appears. On the neck there are remains of painted vegetal motifs as on the other side, where some kind of scene also seems to have been erased. The handles are decorated with masks of the Gorgon in relief, a symbol of death. Craters are wide-bodied, wide-mouthed vessels that were used for mixing wine, since the Greeks did not drink pure wine, according to the classical usage of the time. In this case, we find a singularity and that is that it has an open bottom, which makes it totally useless for everyday use and its function would be funerary. The hole in the base, or rather the absence of it, would allow libations to be made in honor of the deceased and the infernal divinities. In fact, most of the existing pieces in southern Italy have been discovered in funerary contexts, and a significant number of these vessels were probably produced solely as funerary trousseaus and are therefore open at the bottom.
Parallel craters can be found in the most reputable international museums, such as the British Museum (reg. no. 1856,1226.385), the Paul Getty Museum (reg. no. 80.AE.141.2) or the Central Romano-Germanic Museum in Mainz (reg. no. 28085).