Notae Numismaticae - Zapiski Numizmatyczne (7.2012)

DOROTA GORZELANY

(situated at a slant in relation to the handles’ axis), wearing a diadem of water reeds,
and with four dolphins swimming around. The medallion is encircled by thirteen
stamped palmettes, a fourfold row of rouletted hatching, with the bend of the cup
walls accentuated by means of an engraved linę. The glaze is deep black, with
a metallic sheen.
An almost identical cup (PI. 2) came into the Princes Czartoryski Museum in
1897, along with some other antiąuities donated by Zofia Wołodkowicz after the
death of her son Bolesław (1860-97) - a lawyer and amateur collector. A group of
seventeen Greek and South Italian vases is marked by the items’ good ąuality and
condition of preservation. Unfortunately, we do not know the source from which
Wołodkowicz had purchased these objects. The kylix from his collection3 differs
from the one purchased by Prince Czartoryski by a few millimetres only. The me-
dallion with Arethusa’s head surrounded by the four dolphins is situated along the
axis of the handles. It is less distinct and not covered with a silvery coating. It is
surrounded by eight palmettes placed intermittently with groups of three impressed
circles, with a point in the middle, and a spiral-shaped rouletted hatching in five
rows. Both kylikes datę from the latter ąuarter of the fourth century BC.4
These so-called Arethusa cups are marked by their traditional kylix form
known as “delicate class,” present in the Attic pottery beginning from the second
ąuarter of the fifth century BC.5 Precise and subtle proportions as well as its fine
decorative motifs (impressed palmettes and rouletted hatching) led to the dissemi-
nation of this form in Southern Italy during the latter ąuarter of the fifth and in the
fourth century BC as well as its being copied, but often with the loss of the high-
ąuality of Attic workmanship.6 The interior decoration in the form of a medallion
is also characteristic of the typical decorative Solutions for kylikes both in black-
and red-figure painting and in cups decorated with impressed motifs. Its relief
character, in the form of little heads set at the bottom of deeper vessels had been
introduced only in the West Slope Ware in the first half of the third century BC.7

3 Inv. no. MNK XI - 1466 (collection of the Princes Czartoryski Foundation deposited with the National
Museum in Kraków). Light brown clay, black metallic glaze. Dimensions: height - 5 cm, diameter 11.8 cm, di-
ameter, including handles 17.6 cm, foot diameter - 6.8 cm; medallion diameter - 2.7 cm. Condition: minor chips
and cracks in the glaze surface on the outer side of the vessel, losses at two spots near the edge. Cf. BULAS, CVA
Cracovie, p. 22, pl. 19,5.
4 For a analogous example, cf. Z. KOTITSA, Hellenistische Ker arnik im Martin von Wagner Museum der
Universitat Wurzburg, Wiirzburg 1998, p. 28f.
5 B. A. SPARKES, L.A. TALCOTT, The Athenian Agora XII. Black andPlain Pottery in the 6th, 5th and 4th
Centuries B.C., Princeton 1970, pp. 102-105, Tab. 22-23.
6 F. BETTI [in:] G.S. CHIESA, F. SLAVAZZI (eds.), Ceramiche attiche e magnogreche. Collezione Banca
Intesa, vol. III, p. 792, Cat. No. 400, 401.
7 S.I. ROTROFF, “Athenian West Slope Vase Painting,” Hesperia 60, 1991, p. 71.22, 81.53.57. Examples
of relief decorations dating from the early fifth century BC can be found in E. A. ZERVOUDAKI, “Attische poly-
chrome Reliefkeramik des spaten 5. und des 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.” MD Al (A) 83, 1968, p. 73.