Red-Figure Calyx-Krater (Mixing Vessel): Medea in Chariot (A); Telephos with Baby Orestes (B) (c. 400 BCE): Art, History and Details

Red-Figure Calyx-Krater (Mixing Vessel): Medea in Chariot (A); Telephos with Baby Orestes (B) (c. 400 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Policoro Painter (South Italian, Lucanian, active c. 400 BCE).

The work and its context

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

The remarkable scene on the front of this vase relates to the famous tragedy Medea, written by Euripides and first produced in Athens in 431 BC. Framed in the center by a halo (recalling her sun god grandfather Helios), the sorceress Medea flies off in a dragon-drawn chariot. Seeking revenge against her husband Jason, leader of the Argonauts, Medea has just slain their two children. Two Furies flank her, while Jason and a distraught nurse and teacher approach the bodies on the altar below. A different tragedy unfolds on the other side of the vase, from Euripides’s Telephos (438 BC). The wounded warrior Telephos holds the baby Orestes hostage at an altar, with Agamemnon and Clytemnestra rushing to save their son.

Object facts

• Title: Red-Figure Calyx-Krater (Mixing Vessel): Medea in Chariot (A); Telephos with Baby Orestes (B)
• Date: c. 400 BCE
• Creator attribution: Policoro Painter (South Italian, Lucanian, active c. 400 BCE)
• Culture: South Italian, Lucanian
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Diameter of mouth: 49.9 cm (19 5/8 in.); Overall: 50.5 cm (19 7/8 in.); Diameter of foot: 22 cm (8 11/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - South Italy
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1991.1

A detail from the museum

This vase includes scenes connected to two Athenian tragedies dealing with children—Medea and Telephos.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (LIMC), vol. I. Zürich: Artemis, 1981.
• Von Bothmer, Dietrich. Wealth of the Ancient World: The Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt Collections. Fort Worth, Tex: Kimbell Art Museum, 1983.

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.