An Attic Red-figured Calyx Krater, attributed to the Phiale Painter, circa 440-430 B.C.

decorated in front with a scene from a satyr play, showing a maenad seated on a klismos, holding a wreathed thyrsos, and facing a figure of Papposilenos holding a wreathed child with both hands and balancing him on his extended right foot, a kantharos positioned sideways in the field, the reverse with two confronted draped figures, a woman holding a torch(?) before her and a bearded man leaning on his staff, an ivy wreath below the rim, the details in added red wash for the wreaths and white paint for Papposilenos's hair.

said to have been found in Vulci
the Neapolitan art dealer Giuseppe Baseggio, Rome, circa 1848
acquired in the 1970s by the present owner's parents at auction at La Salle des Ventes des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Emil Braun, Bullettino dell'Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica, 1848, pp. 69-70
anonymous drawing, circa 1848 (Deutsche Archaeologisches Institut, Rom, neg. no. 75.672; http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/marbilder/4649143)
Adolf Greifenhagen, Alte Zeichnungen nach unbekannten griechischen Vasen: vorgetragen am 4. Juni 1976 (Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse; Jahrg. 1976, Heft 3), Munich, 1976, pp. 31-32, fig. 31

Until recently this vase was known only through a drawing executed on March 10th, 1848, now in the German Archaeological Institute in Rome.

For a calyx krater with similar ivy decoration on the rim and also attributed to the Phiale Painter in the Princeton Museum of Art, inv. no. 1997-66, see D. Buitron, Attic Vase Painting in New England Collections, 1972, no. 73 (http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/13228). For a bell krater in Ancona, inv. no. 105, painted with a similar subject from a satyr play see F. Brommer, Satyrspiele: Bilder griechischer Vasen, 2nd ed., Berlin, 1959, figs. 38-39 and Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum, vol. 6, 2000, p. 193, fig. 3b (http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/record/5B73188E-C966-418E-B341-A2C4B5DF6E2A).