Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
91
Fragment of the Rim of a Large Krater
The interior surface is smooth. The breaks are clean. The surfaces are fresh. Remains of chiseling on the exterior run horizontally between the outer edge of the lip and the top of the tongues.
The rim is enriched with broad egg-and-dart molding rising from a band of reels along the inner edge. The ends of concave tongue fluting are visible along the body below the outward curve of the lip or outer edge of the rim. One such complete marble krater, "vase of life," dated in the fourth to early fifth century A.D., has survived to document this decorative art in late antique, early Christian times, aside from representations in relief and other media (Weitzmann, 1979, pp. 334-336, no. 314). A seemingly complete example in the Musée du Louvre has a rich rim and acanthus leaves on the lower body. This krater seems to date from the earlier part of the Roman Empire, perhaps Hadrianic times (about AD 125) (Reinach, 1897-1930, I, p. 132, top right). The same is probably true of an example at the entrance to the Vatican Museums Lippold, 1956, p. 18, no. 14, pl. 3).
Garden and cemetery kraters of this shape, based on metalwork, go back to the beginnings of the Roman Empire, as demonstrated by the example found on the Via Appia near the tomb of Caecilia Metella. Here the floral enrichment is related to the lower outside panels of the Ara Pacis Augustae as well as to silver cups from the Boscoreale treasure and from Caesarea in Cappadocia (Jones, 1912, pp. 104-105, Galleria no. 31a, pl. 28). The bowls on the tops of the Barberini candelabra in the Vatican, although flatter, have the same sort of convex fluting on their outsides (Bieber, 1977, p. 213, pl. 146, figs. 851-854).
The same forms of enrichment were used for flat fountain basins as for deep kraters among the marble garden sculptures of the area around Rome. A fragment of unknown provenance in Rome demonstrates these decorative parallels in the shape of a dish like the bird-baths produced in the modern ateliers working with Carrara marble in the suburbs of Rome (Cima, 1982, pp. 138-139, no. VI.2).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
