Apulian Red‑figure Figural Vase Fragment

Preserving the upper body of a nude bearded man holding a staff and resting his left arm behind him. Probably from a cup or skyphos. Attributed to the circle of the Iliupersis Painter. 

South Italian, Apulia, Late Classical period, ca. 375 to 340 BCE

Size 2-1/2 inches L. 

The Iliupersis Painter (often spelled Ilioupersis) was a leading Apulian red‑figure vase painter active in Magna Graecia around 375–350 BCE, at the beginning of the so‑called Ornate Style. Named after his “Sack of Troy” volute-krater in the British Museum, he worked in a major Apulian workshop, probably at Taranto, and produced over a hundred surviving vases, especially large volute kraters but also a wide range of shapes. He was highly innovative: scholars credit him with popularizing naiskos (grave) scenes on Apulian pottery, introducing rippled lower bodies on vessels, decorating volute‑krater handles with round medallions, and developing the motif of a female head emerging from a flower, all features that became standard in later South Italian red‑figure. His repertoire combines mythological, Dionysiac, funerary, and genre scenes with multiple figures on several registers, and he made extensive use of added white, yellow, and sometimes red and brown to heighten the ornate effect. The Iliupersis Painter worked alongside and influenced important contemporaries such as the Painter of Athens 1714 and probably taught successors like the Lycurgus Painter, making his workshop central to the flourishing of Apulian vase painting in the mid‑4th century BCE

Provenance Private New York City Collection