Daunian Kyathos with Painted Star Motif, Subgeometric Apulia

Southern Italy, Apulia, Daunian, Subgeometric period. A broad, shallow cup lifted by a single high strap handle that arcs above the rim, the classic form of the Daunian kyathos. The buff-slipped earthenware is painted in orange-red and brown-black, with a wide band of color around the interior wall, matching stripes running up the handle, and at the center a four-pointed star whose concave arms are divided between the two colors. The geometric vocabulary is characteristic of the Subgeometric painters of northern Apulia. They kept to stars, meanders and hatched bands for centuries rather than adopting the figural style of their Greek neighbors. Cups of this shape were used for dipping and pouring wine and other liquids, and they appear regularly in Daunian tombs, where drinking vessels were placed with the dead. Daunia occupied the northern third of ancient Apulia, the plain and foothills around Monte Gargano, Canosa, and Ordona. Its potters produced one of the longest-lived painted traditions in Italy, running from roughly the 7th century BCE to the Roman conquest, and one of the most conservative: while Peucetian and Messapian workshops to the south absorbed Greek red-figure conventions from Taras, Daunian painters stayed loyal to an abstract repertoire of stars, chevrons, lozenges, and dense hatching applied in matte iron-oxide reds and manganese browns over a pale slip. The four-pointed star with concave arms is among their signature motifs, appearing on funnel-mouthed askoi and tall-handled cups alike. Chronologies for the ware rest largely on De Juliis's seriation of the Subgeometric phases. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 204994

Estimate:£261.63

View all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorJewellery & Gems