CIRCA 530-520 B.C.

On each side of this cup is a pair of confronting satyrs, each squatting and masturbating. Details of the hair, beard and tail are in added red, while the arcing ejaculate is a series of dots in added white. In the handle-zone below is an imitation inscription rendered as a series of black dots, with palmettes framing the handles.
While the painter has not as yet been identified, a fragment from a lip-cup by the same painter, found at Naucratis, now at Cambridge University (NA 217), preserves part of right-facing satyr presumably from a similar confronting pair. For two other cups with different subjects, perhaps by the same hand, see nos. 29 and 30 in P. Heesen, “Meaningless, But Not Useless!, Nonsense Inscriptions on Athenian Little-Master Cups,” in D. Yatromanolakis, ed., Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings. Depictions of masturbating satyrs are not particularly common in black-figure. For a single satyr on either side of a lip-cup by the Tleson Painter, see Heesen, op. cit., 2011, no. 346, and for a complete list found on vases of various other shapes, see G.M. Hedreen, Silens in Attic Black-figure Vase-painting, pp. 172-173, n. 24.