Pelike, Apulia 340-310 B.C.

Pelike with wedding scene. Magna Graecia, Apulia, 340-310 BC.
Ceramics.
From the house of William Douglas Hamilton 1731-1803, Stanley House, Chelsea, London. Nicky Haslam, London, 2000. Art Market, UK 2021.
Author: close to the Painter of the Underworld.
Thermoluminescence test attached.
Conservation: repaired from original fragments. Good general condition.
Measurements: 58 x 29 x 29 cm.

The Apulian vases developed their own thematic and stylistic patterns. In them, in the middle of the IV century B.C. the wedding scenes like the one we are dealing with became popular, replacing the banquets of the gods and episodes of the Trojan cycle. Stylistic similarities are appreciated with the so-called "Painter of the Underworld", Apulian ceramographer who owes his name to the numerous scenes of the underworld that he represented, the most studied being the krater of volutes preserved in the Munich Museum. In the wedding scene shown here, occupying much of the belly, the bride is shown seated with her himation adorned with jewels and holding a mirror before her while being fanned by a servant girl. Perfume and chest bearers accompany them. A winged figure, which could allude to Nike as a messenger of good marriage augury, flies over the scene. The figures exude sensuality and are inscribed between fretwork (the classic Greek fretwork on the lower part of the belly and superimposed fretwork on the neck). Beautiful palmettes form stylized vegetal designs that close the scene on the flanks. Apulian pottery is one of the main stylistic and technical schools of Italian productions that emerged at the end of the 5th century B.C. in the Greek colonies of Italy, before its gradual decline and replacement by Campanian productions in the 3rd century B.C. The peliké is a Greek ceramic vessel classified as a variety of the amphora, but with a wider base. It has two vertical handles facing each other that go down from the mouth, narrow but with a very wide lip, to the beginning of the almost spherical body. It was intended for the storage and transport of liquid or solid food.
Red-figure pottery was one of the most important figurative styles of Greek production. It was developed in Athens around 530 B.C., and was used until the 3rd century B.C. It replaced the previous predominant style of black-figured pottery within a few decades. The technical basis was the same in both cases, but in the red figures the coloring is inverted, the figures being highlighted on a dark background, as if they were illuminated by a theatrical light, following a more natural scheme. Painters working with black figures were forced to keep the motifs well separated from each other and to limit the complexity of the illustration. In contrast, the red-figure technique allowed greater freedom. Each figure was silhouetted against a black background, allowing painters to portray anatomical details with more accuracy and variety.