In memory of J. Robert Guy (1949–2020)
When the Museum of Historic Art first opened at Princeton University in 1890, the collection included several examples of painted Athenian pottery. Indeed, the impetus to construct the Museum was the promise made by William Cowper Prime, Class of 1843, to donate to the University his extensive collection of antique ceramics. Included in the Trumbull-Prime Collection was a somewhat unusual black-figure neck-amphora that became the name-vase of the Princeton Painter.1 Familiarity with the arts of the ancient world was considered an essential component of a Princeton education, and from the beginning, the principal purpose of the Art Museum was to support the teaching mission of the University.
The early history of the Princeton University Art Museum—under whatever name—and of its collections of ancient art has been told elsewhere.2 The collection of Attic vases grew slowly, the most significant additions being thirteen works donated in 1933 by Junius S. Morgan, Class of 1888, including a red-figure kalpis by the Niobid Painter (entry no. 30). The pace of collecting began to accelerate after 1943, when the director of the Art Museum, Frank Jewett Mather, hired Frances Follin Jones (1912–1999), a Bryn Mawr graduate who had excavated at Tarsus with Hetty Goldman. “Miss Jones”—Franny to her friends—swiftly rose to become curator of classical art and eventually the Museum’s curator of collections. Even before her arrival, plans for publishing a Princeton CVA had been set in motion by her predecessor, Gladys Davidson. It is worth quoting a memorandum that Miss Jones filed in the late 1950s, entitled “Princeton Fascicules of the C.V.A.”:
In 1941 the American Philosophical Society made a grant of $250.00 for the photography necessary for the preparation of the manuscript. Preliminary work on the catalogue was begun by Gladys Davidson (now Mrs. Saul S. Weinberg) until she left the Art Museum in the spring of 1943 for service in the Department of State. Because of the war an enforced period of quiescence followed, but even when resumed, the work on the fascicule progressed only spasmodically because of the numerous administrative duties which fell on the small staff of the Museum.
Jones, who received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr in 1952, was well qualified to produce a CVA fascicule, having published the Hellenistic and Roman pottery from Gözlü Kule, Tarsus. Returning to work on the project, she commissioned dozens of new photographs. Life intervened again, however, when in 1966 the original Museum building was demolished to make way for the expansion of McCormick Hall, which had opened in 1923. The new structure housed Marquand Library and most of the Department of Art and Archaeology, freeing exhibition and storage space for the Museum.
Frances Jones retired in 1983 and was succeeded by J. Robert Guy (1949–2020), who was named associate curator of ancient art. Guy received his DPhil at Oxford in 1982, after earlier earning an MA at the University of Cincinnati, where he fell in love with Attic vase-painting under the tutelage of Cedric Boulter. Possessed of broad learning and a splendid visual memory, Guy throughout his career attributed thousands of vases and fragments to the hands of individual vase-painters, employing the well-established methods of Sir John D. Beazley. Several works in this volume were acquired during his tenure as curator (1984–91), and six were attributed by him. Encouraged by the director of the Art Museum, Allen Rosenbaum, Guy vigorously researched the collection for the often-stated purpose of continuing the plans of Weinberg and Jones for a Princeton CVA. These plans were again postponed with Guy’s departure from the Museum in 1991, but the project remained on the publication schedule.
This fascicule of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum is the first of what is hoped will be a series of additional volumes cataloguing Princeton’s entire collection of Attic pottery. The present fascicule encompasses roughly half of the Attic red-figure vases, excluding only cups and oil containers. The forty-four works represent a variety of shapes: amphora and neck-amphora, pelike, volute-krater, calyx-krater, bell-krater, column-krater, dinos, hydria, oinochoe, loutrophoros, lebes gamikos, lekanis, pyxis, askos, and a few fragments of uncertain derivation. The descriptions follow the format provided by members of the American CVA Committee—Susan B. Matheson, Tyler Jo Smith, and John H. Oakley (chair)—for whose careful editing and wise counsel we are grateful. Attributions made by other scholars are credited in the entries, wherein also is related whatever is known about the origin and histories of the vases.
Many friends and colleagues have contributed to the project. Museum Editor Janet Rauscher ably managed the entire project under the supervision of Managing Editor Anna Brower and the gentle oversight of Caroline Harris, Diane W. and James E. Burke Associate Director for Education, and with invaluable support from Assistant Editor Kate Justement and former Assistant Editor Nora McGreevy. Bailey Benson, currently a doctoral candidate at Boston University, wrote the entries for three pieces (Entries 8–10), while Ardeth Anderson of the University of Pennsylvania meticulously drew the profiles of each pot and fragment. For the new photography featured here, we are indebted to photographers Jeffrey Evans, the Museum’s manager of visual resources, and his former colleague Emile Laskey. Cleaning and conservation of selected works were undertaken by Leslie Gat of Art Conservation Group, Brooklyn, under the oversight of Chief Conservator Bart Devolder. Alan W. Johnston (University of London) furnished expert commentary on the graffiti of several pots. Ruth Allen (Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University) provided photographs of related vase fragments at Emory, while critical images were supplied by Daniele Maras, Mario Iozzo, and Claudia Noferi of the National Archaeological Museum of Florence. For their myriad comments, corrections, notes, clarifications, and encouragement, the authors thank Nathan Arrington, Michael Bennett, Jasper Gaunt, An Jiang, Michael Koortbojian, Adrienne Lezzi-Hafter, Ian McPhee, Judy Padgett, Aaron Paul, Seth Pevnick, David Saunders, Alan Shapiro, Michalis Tiverios, and Dyfri Williams. Any omissions or remaining errors are fully the responsibility of the authors.
We are especially proud to offer this fascicule as an open-access digital publication with the option of print on demand. John Kudos, Jess Mackta, Christyan Juniadi Setiawan, Dzikri Nadhimulloh, and Widia Maulana Pratama of the KUDOS Design Collaboratory, as well as Tina Henderson of Miko McGinty Inc, oversaw the design and production of this volume using Quire, a multiformat publishing software developed by Getty. At the Getty, we thank Digital Publications Manager Greg Albers and Erin Cecele Dunigan, Quire community manager, for their support. The text was carefully edited by Sharon Herson and, above all, by Laura Lesswing, to whose erudition we owe many suggestions and observations.
It is a bittersweet pleasure to dedicate this book to the memory of Robert Guy, whose untimely death denied us the opportunity to solicit his counsel and commentary on the final manuscript. Without his insightful comments over the years and the many notes and observations that he inscribed in Museum records, this project could not have been completed.