Object Description
A striking Ancient Greek, Apulian, terracotta red-figure plate, decorated with a “lady of fashion”. Gently sloping walls rise from a stepped ring foot, creating a wide circular mouth, with a flared, everted rim, and shallow bowl. The inside of the bowl is covered with decoration, centred around a profile head of a woman, facing left. She is depicted stylistically, using the red-figure technique against a circular black tondo, and wonderfully adorned in the contemporary fashions. Her hair is swept up under an embroidered saccos (head-scarf) or cap, embellished with black and white dots, likely strings of pearls or beads, and white crosses. The top of her head covering is open, from which a bunch of hair, tied with a small white ribbon, emerges. Two corkscrew curls escape her head covering at the side of her head, framing her face. Her hair is only partially covered by the saccos, with the front of her head crowned with a radiate stephane. Strings of pearls, represented by lines of white dots, act as a necklace, earrings, and hair adornments. Four lines of varying lengths create her profile eye and her other facial features, such as her long straight nose, closed mouth, and soft chin, are still clearly visible. She faces a phiale, with a white rim and white dotted decoration, in the left field before her. Other small decorative elements, such as small white dots and slightly larger white penannular motifs, in the black circular background further enrich the composition. Concentric bands of decoration frame the image. The tondo features a wave-pattern border, with a thin black stripe beneath it, between two reserved bands. Another reserved border surrounds the wave-border, before another encircling black band with white, slender laurel leaves. The leaves curl outwards, with small, white dots between. The thick, everted rim is decorated small, sharp tongues in black paint. The underside and the stepped foot of the bowl, including the base of the foot, is covered in a black slip, with a thick reserve band around before and at the top of the raised, ring foot.
Date: Circa 350-300 BC