Since its beginnings in the nineteenth century, the Princeton University Art Museum’s collection of Greek painted pottery, including hundreds of Attic vases and fragments, has grown considerably through gifts, bequests, and purchases. The initial Trumbull-Prime Collection, gifted in 1890, was followed by donations from the Museum’s first director, Allan Marquand, and from generations of alumni, including—to speak only of works in this volume—Junius Morgan, Class of 1888; J. Penrose Harland, Class of 1913; Lloyd Cotsen, Class of 1950; Paul Didisheim, Class of 1950; Frederick Schultz Jr., Class of 1976; and Emily Townsend Vermeule, honorary degree holder of the Class of 1989. In 2002, the Museum was given a handsome red-figure pelike (entry no. 8) by Robert F. Goheen, Class of 1940, to whom it had been given in 1972 upon his retirement as president of the University. Other donors include Mr. and Mrs. Elie Borowski, Dietrich von Bothmer, Herbert Cahn, Ricarda Didisheim, Jessie Frothingham, Mrs. Allan Marquand, Mr. and Mrs. Ewald Mayer, F. Williamson Price, George Rowley, Marc Sanders, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Sharrer, Cornelius Vermeule III, Nicholas Zoullas, and the children of archaeologist and Princeton resident Sally Roberts. The collection of Attic vases also has benefited over the years from generously endowed purchase funds, in particular the Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund, the Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr. Memorial Collection Fund, and the Caroline G. Mather Fund. Through these resources, the Museum has been able to be unusually intentional in the strategic growth of its collections, in addition to being the grateful beneficiary of so much largesse on the part of so many collectors.
Over the years, many of the Museum’s Attic vases have been published in articles, monographs, exhibition catalogues, and in the Record of the Princeton University Art Museum, a peer-reviewed journal established in 1946, in which new acquisitions have been enumerated annually. The selection of vases gathered here has been attributed to many significant vase-painters of the Late Archaic and Classical periods, including the Pan Painter, the Niobid Painter, and Polygnotos. The vases depict a variety of iconographic themes, ranging from cultic practices and domestic life to scenes inspired by myth, poetry, and the epic past. The growth of the collections and the scholarship surrounding them is the fruit of many scholars, most notably those individuals who have held the position of curator of ancient Mediterranean art at Princeton, a post now held by Carolyn Laferrière. Following on the work, past and present, of former curators including Frances Follin Jones, J. Robert Guy, and J. Michael Padgett; research associate Will Austin; faculty colleagues such as T. Leslie Shear Jr., William Childs, Nathan Arrington, and others, this volume is the fruit of years rather than of months of collecting and research. I congratulate not only its authors but all who have shaped the corpus of objects and knowledge that are captured here—and those who will shape our future understanding of these materials as our outlook on and knowledge of the responsibilities of cultural property stewardship continue to evolve.
This project has had the ongoing and generous support of the Barr-Ferree Publications Fund. We take this moment to express our gratitude to the Fund, and to all who care about the continuing legacy of the ancient world in contemporary times.