AN APULIAN RED-FIGURE BELL KRATER 4th century B.C., painted to one side with a naked youth holding a dish and a basket looking towards a maenad holding a tynpanon above a Greek key border, the other side with two himation clad youths holding staffs, painted with palmettes beneath the handles, a band of laurel under the rim, details in added white. Height 37.5cm PROVENANCE: Sotheby's, Fine Decorative Arts, 25-27 May 1997, lot 747 acquired from the above LITERATURE: Details of this item have been published in a work by Professor Dale Trendall and it is from the Schulman Group. OTHER NOTES: The ancient Greek colony in Apulia, now Puglia, in southern Italy was the largest centre of pottery production at the time of its heyday in 430–300 B.C., and over half the approximately 20,000 surviving pieces have been found in this area. The eminent Australian academic Professor Arthur Dale Trendall considered it the work of the Schulman painter who he named after a calyx krater in the Schulman Collection in Boston. His work mainly features Dionysiac scenes probably connected to funerary traditions and grave cults, as many of the vases were made as grave offerings, and this krater is a typical example. On one side the red figures of a youth and maenad are highlighted in white and seem to dance with their offerings to the god of wine, whilst on the opposite side, the sober and static figures of ephebes draped in their himations offer a total contrast and seem to suggest the balance between life and death. Ronan Sulich | Senior Adviser, Sydney