Red-Figure Bail Amphora (Storage Vessel): Draped Women (330–320 BCE): Art, History and Details

Red-Figure Bail Amphora (Storage Vessel): Draped Women (330–320 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is CA Painter, Walters Sub-group (South Italian, Campanian, active at Cumae, c. 350–320 BCE).

The work and its context

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

The bail amphora, named for the tall handle arching over the mouth, is a shape made primarily in Campania, where red-figure vases were produced at both Capua and Cumae in the 4th century BC. The anonymous painter of this vase is known as the CA Painter, for Cumae A, the first significant artist in this area. The seated and standing women on both sides of the vase, some only partially draped (and their white skin now largely lost), recall those on many of the painter’s other vases, as do the elaborate palmette patterns on either side.

Object facts

• Title: Red-Figure Bail Amphora (Storage Vessel): Draped Women
• Date: 330–320 BCE
• Creator attribution: CA Painter, Walters Sub-group (South Italian, Campanian, active at Cumae, c. 350–320 BCE)
• Culture: South Italian, Campanian, Cumaean
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Diameter: 12.2 cm (4 13/16 in.); Overall: 54.6 cm (21 1/2 in.)
• Collection: GR - South Italy
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1967.245

A detail from the museum

This vase once belonged to the famous opera singer Evan Gorga.

Collection credit

Gift of Italian Ministry of Public Education

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Italy Presents Gift to Museum,” November 14, 1967, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• “Annual Report for 1967.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 55, no. 6 (1968): 167–205. Ill. p. 173.

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.