C, Brussels A 718.1 The kantharos by the Sosias Painter, Athens, Acr. 556, only fragments of which remain,2 may have been of this type: it would come between those by Nikosthenes and that by Douris.
The exact form of the foot in Boston (Boston 00.334) can be made out from the photographs. The potter has rounded off the upper edge of the torus, both towards the foot-profile, and towards the foot-jog, which is also rounded; and the black of the upper side is continued a good way down the profile, even at the expense of restricting the space for the inscription. This is very much the same foot as Nikosthenes used for many of his 'Nicosthenic' neck-amphorae; and his variant of Cup A3 shows the same attitude towards the foot.
The jog at the level of the handles is so slight that it might escape notice at first glance. In the London kantharos it has disappeared: but, to compensate, the jog on the foot is not rounded: the 'punctuation' is shifted but not abolished, and the case is the same as in lip-cup and band-cup.4
Douris's version of the shape is more massive and powerful, the bowl deeper, the stem shorter; there is no jog on the top of the foot, but the foot-profile is reserved and the upper edge of it is not rounded away: another shift of punctuation.
Of the five kantharoi fashioned by Nikosthenes, the fragment in Odessa is signed by the painter Epiktetos. The rest were decorated by another artist, the Nikosthenes Painter.
On one side of our kantharos, Dionysos stands, setting one foot forward, at a lighted altar, over which he pours wine from his kantharos. A woman, a maenad, stands facing him, looking down and stretching her arms straight downwards, with the hands open. A flat basket with scooped-out side stands on the ground at her feet: it is the κανοῦν, often seen in pictures of sacrifices, which contains the lighter requisites of the cult.5 Here the sides are solid: they are often voided. Reisch has aptly compared the group of Dionysos and the maenad with two figures on a contemporary cup, by the Ambrosios Painter, in Würzburg,6 and conjectured that the maenad is strewing handfuls of groats (ὀλαί) on the altar, groats taken from the κανοῦν beside her on the ground. To left of this pair, a maenad dances; to right of them, another, less vigorously. Behind the left-hand maenad a thyrsus stands or leans.
Between the volutes of the altar there is a rough band of egg-pattern, and on either side of the band a dot, which might seem to have strayed from the oculus of the volute. In the base of the altar the artist must be indicating curvilinear mouldings.
Dionysos and the right-hand maenad are dressed in long chitons, and himatia of 'Ionic' mode. The other maenads wear the chiton only; in the woman at the altar the girdle is concealed by the kolpos; in the other it is exposed. The women have bracelets. All four heads are wreathed; the left-hand one with ivy, the rest with nondescript leaves. Relief-contours, except for mouth and lips of the right-hand maenad, and the lower side of her nose. Brown for the crinkled lines on the upper parts of the chitons and on the himation. In the left-hand figure the loose ends of the hair are in relief-lines. The contour of her hair is incised; in the others it is partly incised, partly reserved. Red for the wreaths, the wine, and the flame.
On the subject see also Erika Simon Opfernde Götter pp. 50-57.
On the other side of the vase, Dionysos reclines on the ground with one elbow on a doubled cushion. He holds a drinking-horn in one hand, and in the other a great branch, from which vine-leaves grow, and ivy as well. He turns his head round towards a satyr who approaches with a wineskin over his shoulder. At the feet of the god, another satyr, with his left foot raised, holds a pointed amphora by the end and balances it over his left thigh. On the left, a skin flute-case hangs, with the mouthpiece-box. The satyrs have a grave appearance and extend one arm to announce their presence. The dominant in the picture is the violent turn of Dionysos's head, and the painter must have been pleased with it. The god's himation is let down to his waist, and he wears a saccos, really a woman's
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