Two-handled vessel (nestoris)

ITALIAN VASE PAINTING in ITALY, #146 (58.1303) Nestoris about 360-330 B.C. The added red decoration is set within panels on either side of the upper body: on one side a swan standing between upright palmettes, on the other, a central palmette flanked by disconnected lotus buds and half-palmettes. There are rays on the outside of the everted rim. This nestoris is small enough to be called miniature, but many nestorides are even smaller; for example, a pair once in the J. V. Noble collection and now in the Tampa Museum of Art (inv. 86.117-118), each only 5 cm tall (M. E. Mayo, in Mayo, "Magna Graecia," p. 304, no. 159). Beazley called the shape a "kantharoid" (EVP, pp. 218-219), which it is, but it is clearly also a variant of the Lucanian and Apulian nestoris (e.g., catalogue no. 4), descended from the native trozella. The palmette decoration is somewhat unusual, as is the swan; compare a nestoris in the Japanese market (N. Horiuchi, Catalogue, no. 4 [1990], no. 29).