ATTRIBUTED TO THE ILIUPERSIS PAINTER, CIRCA 370-350 B.C.

As H. Hoffmann observes (p. 111 in Tarentine Rhyta), South Italian pottery rhyta are almost always unpierced and were never intended to be employed as drinking vessels; they are “sepulchral in both function and significance.” Moreover, whereas the animal forms of earlier Attic examples were purely decorative in nature, “there is every reason to believe that in Apulia these same animals played a more specifically religious role.” This large kantharoid (two-handled) rhyton is modeled in the form of a bull’s head with short, tapering horns, alert ears, and incised, textured lines indicating the locks on the animal’s poll. On one side of the bowl is a seated draped youth and on the other a woman running to the right holding a wreath and a phiale. Hoffmann (op. cit., p. 112) contends that bulls were represented largely for their roles as sacrificial animals and for their associations with Dionysos, who was worshipped in South Italy as a steer-god. For another bull-headed rhyton by the same painter, see no. 37 in M.E. Mayo, et al., eds., The Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia.

Trendall (p. 79 in Red Figured Vases of South Italy and Sicily) considers the Iliupersis Painter “an artist of the highest importance” for his role in advancing a new style of Apulian vase painting. The artist established the canons for the decoration of monumental funerary vases, which feature mourners around a naiskos on the obverse and a stele on the reverse.