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 of this cup has not as yet been identified, a fragment from a lip-cup by the same painter, found at Naucratis, now at Cambridge University (inv. no NA 217), preserves part of the 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.