Fragment of a Red-Figure Bell-Krater or Calyx-Krater (Mixing Vessel): Female Head (Aglauros) (c. 460–450 BCE): Art, History and Details

Fragment of a Red-Figure Bell-Krater or Calyx-Krater (Mixing Vessel): Female Head (Aglauros) (c. 460–450 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Nausicaa Painter (also known as Polygnotos III; Greek, Attic, active c. 460–440 BCE).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Broken from the upper wall of a large mixing vessel, this fragment shows the head of a woman wearing an earring and an elaborate ribbon in her hair. A faint inscription identifies her as Aglauros, a daughter of Kekrops, the mythical first king of Athens. Although worshipped in a shrine near the Acropolis, Aglauros appears quite rarely in Athenian art, usually with her sisters at the birth of Erichthonios, a future king.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment of a Red-Figure Bell-Krater or Calyx-Krater (Mixing Vessel): Female Head (Aglauros)
• Date: c. 460–450 BCE
• Creator attribution: Nausicaa Painter (also known as Polygnotos III; Greek, Attic, active c. 460–440 BCE)
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.8 x 7.5 cm (2 11/16 x 2 15/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1992.369

A detail from the museum

An inscription identifies this woman as Aglauros, an Athenian princess.

Collection credit

Gift of Frances W. Ingalls

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Brommer, Vasenlisten, 258, B 1, s.v. "A"; Enciclopedia dell'arte antica classica e orientale 1 (1958).
• Beazley, J. D. Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.