This is a second blog post.

The antics of satyrs, companions of Dionysos, were a popular subject for the drinking cups of Athenians. In the tondo of this kylix, a satyr creeps up on a nymph who naps on a large striped cushion beneath a rocky outcropping. The Greek inscription above them tells why the satyr is so smitten: “the girl is beautiful.”

Getty kylix.

The cup’s painter, Onesimos, seems to take particular delight in juxtaposing the lovely profile of the sleeping girl with the brutish, pug-nosed face of the satyr about to steal a kiss. Contemporary philosophical and poetic interests in sleep and wakefulness, beauty and ugliness, and tamed and untamed nature are expressed with clarity and sensitive understanding in this scene, which is meant to both amuse and arouse. On each side of the exterior a single satyr dances. The figures’ robust physicality combined with the use of short groundlines helps to identify this kylix as an early work by Onesimos, a pupil of Euphronios and possibly the greatest of all red-figure cup-painters.