A lock out on the edge, still wearing his Barena sports jacket and black turtleneck against the night’s chill, glances back. No words are spoken, but a frisson moves through the group. Now the sound of shovels digging the rocky soil in unison, syncopated and fast, is like hot jazz.
When they hit something, the team turns and works on that point. Long poles with spikes ( spillones) piercing the earth rhythmically like the V8 engine in a 33 Stradale.
A man stops here to comb his hair, another, perhaps, takes off his sunglasses for a second to massage the bridge of his nose. Sports jackets, the day to day uniform of Italians from that time, lying nonchalantly on rocky walls. Their muscles bulging beneath their sweat stained Salvatore Piccolo shirts. The healthy glean of their sun kissed skin, kept young with a healthy Italian diet, visible from the light of their torches. We can imagine them- handsome and nattily dressed. Omertà, the ancient code of honour has prevailed to this day. Fascinating and informative, The Sarpedon Krater is a multifaceted introduction to the enduring influence of Greek art on the world.On a dark and stormy night, in Etruria in late December 1971, a ragged band of diggers called the tombaroli unearthed a masterpiece of Greek art: the Sarpedon Krater. Spivey also pursues the figural motif of the slain Sarpedon portrayed on the vase and traces how this motif became a standard way of representing the dead and dying in Western art, especially during the Renaissance. He explains where, how, and why the vase was produced, retrieving what we know about the life and legend of Sarpedon. Spivey takes the reader on a dramatic journey, beginning with the krater’s looting from an Etruscan tomb in 1971 and its acquisition by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, followed by a high-profile lawsuit over its status and its eventual return to Italy. How this came about is told by Nigel Spivey in a concise, stylish book that braids together the creation and adventures of this extraordinary object with an exploration of its abiding influence. It was decorated some 2,500 years ago by Athenian artist Euphronios, and its subsequent history involves tomb raiding, intrigue, duplicity, litigation, international outrage, and possibly even homicide. Perhaps the most spectacular of all Greek vases, the Sarpedon krater depicts the body of Sarpedon, a hero of the Trojan War, being carried away to his homeland for burial.
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