Artist Unknown
The Siamese Painter
(Decorator)
Kotile Pottery Bowl With Handles
- Clay
- Campania Region/Italy
- Purchased, 1972
- 149 x 221 x 145mm
- 72/143
Location: W A Sutton Gallery
Tags: men (male humans), people (agents), spirals (geometric figures)
A skyphos is a two-handled wine cup intended for communal drinking. This one was made in Capua, Southern Italy, during the fourth century BCE. Decorated in the red-figure technique developed in ancient Greece, it depicts an athlete, and reminds us that vessels like this accompanied conversation, celebration and ritual long before artists began imagining the Bacchanalian world of classical myth.
(Timeless: Treasures from the Historical Collection 19 September 2026 – 30 May 2027)
Exhibition History
![Andreas Cellarius Hypothesis Ptolemaica Sive Communis Planetarum Motus Per Eccentricos Et Epicyclos Demonstrans [The Ptolemaic Hypothesis or Common Representation Demonstrating the Planetary Motions through Eccentrics and Epicycles] 1661. Hand-coloured engraving. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, William A. Sutton bequest, 2000](/media/cache/05/97/05970cdff0f6b3264062d69bf2aa90f5.jpg)
Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024
This fourth-century BCE skyphos, or two-handled wine cup, was made in Capua in Southern Italy. The ‘red-figure’ decorative tradition, in which black paint is used to create images from the terracotta surface beneath, which began in Attica, Greece. The athlete pictured here is awkwardly drawn – the painter clearly found arm length a challenge!