Red-Figure Column Krater (Mixing Vessel): Apollo and Goddesses with Chariot (A); Komos (Revel) (B) (c. 470–460 BCE): Art, History and Details

Red-Figure Column Krater (Mixing Vessel): Apollo and Goddesses with Chariot (A); Komos (Revel) (B) (c. 470–460 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Cleveland Painter (name vase; Greek, Attic, active c. 470–460 BCE).

The work and its context

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

Since this column-krater is the most important of 12 vases painted by a Greek artist whose name is unknown, the great English vase expert, Sir John D. Beazley, named him (or her) the Cleveland Painter, after our city. Other vases by the Cleveland Painter are now in New York, Vienna, Paris, and Copenhagen, as well as museums in Greece and Italy. The chariot scene on the main side of the vessel is a divine one, as indicated by the presence of Apollo, identified by his lyre and laurel wreath. With him are three goddesses, probably his sister Artemis (facing him), together with Hera (wearing a crown and holding a scepter and libation dish), and Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Hera, on her way to meet her future husband, Herakles.

Object facts

• Title: Red-Figure Column Krater (Mixing Vessel): Apollo and Goddesses with Chariot (A); Komos (Revel) (B)
• Date: c. 470–460 BCE
• Creator attribution: Cleveland Painter (name vase; Greek, Attic, active c. 470–460 BCE)
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 56.5 cm (22 1/4 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1930.104

A detail from the museum

The revelers on this vessel dance to the music of the barbiton, a stringed instrument associated with leisure and luxury.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• . H. "Greek Vases." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 17, no. 7 (1930)
• Beazley, J. D. Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd ed. 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.