A Magnificent Attic Red-Figure Krater from the Polygnotos Workshop

The Loan and the Agreement with the Republic of Italy

On December 6, 2023, a spectacular volute-krater was installed in the Greek and Roman galleries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is not the first voyage of this artwork across a sea. About 2,440 years ago, it left Athens, where it was made, to reach the Etruscan city of Spina on the northern Adriatic coast. The masterpiece was discovered in 1923 during the excavations of the necropolis of Spina (in a locality named Valle Trebba) in one of the richest and most complex graves: tomb 128. The site yielded thousands of imported Attic vases, local wares, and bronzes, attesting to local funerary practices—such as burying the dead with banquet sets—and the strong entanglement of that Etruscan city (a harbor with an ethnically mixed population) with Athenian culture and art. The discoveries of Spina also played a crucial role in the development of scholarship dedicated to Greek vases, and many of the finds were studied by Sir John Beazley, a British scholar who greatly contributed to the discipline during the twentieth century. The material from Spina is displayed in the National Archaeological Museum of Ferrara (Direzione Regionale Musei Emilia-Romagna).

The four-year loan of the krater is part of an ongoing exchange of antiquities between the Republic of Italy and The Met. The collaborative agreement, established in 2006, involved the transfer of title and the return of several works of art including the famous Euphronios krater (ca. 515 BCE). It also provided for rotating long-term loans of comparably great works of ancient art from the Republic of Italy. The present loan with Ferrara succeeds one from the National Archaeological Museum in Florence. The agreement with Ferrara also provided for the creation of the krater’s replica—in the ancient technique of Athenian potters—that will remain on display in Italy for the entire duration of the loan. The replica will allow for the public to appreciate the important archaeological context without losing the narrative integrity of the grave contents from tomb 128.

The Ancient City of Spina: Archaeological Discoveries

The accidental discovery of Spina in the early 1920s during reclamation work in the Po Delta lagoon near the modern city of Comacchio (Emilia Romagna, Italy) eventually resolved a centuries-old sequence of hypotheses regarding the identification of the city.

The information conveyed by Greek and Latin authors focus on the historical origins of Spina and describe the city’s prosperity thanks to commercial activities and power on the seas. The sources locate the city on a branch of the Po River, providing in some cases very precise indications to detect the exact position.

The Etruscan port of Spina was presumably founded around 540 BCE as a part of the general territorial reorganization of Po Valley, Etruria. This phenomenon aimed at managing the economy of the large territory centered around the city of Felsina (today Bologna), which for a long time had been the driving force of the region and its economic and commercial system. The new settlement created in the Po Delta exploited the river and its access to the Adriatic Sea as vectors for trade. Spina also benefitted from the extraordinary agricultural and commercial potentials of the Po inland, extending the city’s commercial channels towards the west coast regions of Etruria on the Tyrrhenian Sea. This way the new settlement became a cultural cornerstone between Central Europe and the Mediterranean Sea.

The early excavation campaigns (1922–1924) in the locality Valle Trebba, directed by the archaeologist Augusto Negrioli, brought to light 327 tombs, which he immediately identified as the cemetery of Spina. Archaeological investigations continued under the direction of Salvatore Aurigemma, Superintendent of Antiquities of Emilia and Romagna, who continued the excavation in Valle Trebba, bringing the total number of recovered graves to 1215 in a 346-acre area.

The second phase of excavations in the area took place after the end of World War II, when reclamation activities of the Comacchio lagoons were carried on in the nearby Valle Pega. The new sector yielded 2714 burials, excavated between 1954 and 1965 under the direction of Prof. Paolo Enrico Arias and Prof. Nereo Alfieri; the latter also discovered 198 new tombs in Valle Trebba between 1962 and 1965. The tomb contents revealed hundreds of bronze utensils and vessels as well as thousands of Attic figured pottery vases (mostly decorated in red-figure) that had been imported from Athens.

Following those excavations and successive research, at the end of the 1950s, the settlement’s location was eventually identified not far from the necropolis in the area of Valle del Mezzano, thanks also to the use of air photographs taken after the hydraulic reclamation.

Gradually the general topography of the ancient settlement at Spina became clear, located on the sides of an extinct river branch (also detected thanks to air photography), known from medieval sources as the Padovetere or Padiverio, and as the Spinete or Spino by ancient sources. The archaeological investigation of the town started in 1965, continued occasionally until the beginning of the 1980s, and restarted continuously from 2007 to 2017 under the direction of the Archaeological Superintendency of Emilia Romagna in collaboration with the universities of Milan and Zurich.

Archaeological investigations, carried out by the universities of Bologna and Ferrara, are still underway in the area of Spina’s settlement. They aim to better understand this complex and articulated settlement made of wooden buildings, set on isles in a lagoon area, and strengthened by poles stuck in the earth.

The “National Archaeological Museum” of Ferrara, Dedicated to Spina

The discovery of the Etruscan city of Spina lead to the creation of the “Royal Museum of Spina” in Ferrara, today the “National Archaeological Museum.” The choice of Ferrara had followed heated discussions about the best place (Comacchio, Bologna, or Ferrara) to preserve and exhibit the extremely important finds that had emerged from the Comacchio lagoons. The museum was inaugurated on October 20, 1935, in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Costabili, after a renovation to adapt the building to its new museal purpose.

Re-designed in 1970, the Museum was closed at the end of the 1980s for a complete renovation and reopened to the public in 1997. It underwent further expansions in the following decades to gain the structure that characterizes it today. Spina’s archaeological heritage is a treasury of ancient history, defined by Sir John Beazley as “the largest collection of Attic red-figure vases in the world.”

The Attic Volute-Krater from Tomb 128

The artefact loaned to The Met is a large Attic red-figure volute-krater, found in tomb 128 of the Valle Trebba necropolis, dating back to the end of the fifth century BCE. The main scene represented on the monumental vase depicts two divinities enthroned with a procession of men and women, youths and adults, dancing and playing flutes, tympana, and cymbals. Because of this unique scene and the difficulties to interpret it and identify the divine couple, the volute-krater from tomb 128 is one of the most famous and discussed vases in Athenian red-figure pottery.

This masterpiece of classical art was attributed to the school of Polygnotos, a major Greek pottery workshop that operated in Athens during the time of the Parthenon’s construction. The monument’s sculpted decoration, devised by the great artist Phidias, stylistically inspired the potter Polygnotos and the members of his workshop. They elaborated what is called today the Grand Style in Attic red-figure, characterized by monumental vases painted with tall figures.

Further Reading

Alfieri, N., P. E. Arias, and M. Hirmer. Spina. Florence, 1958.

Arias, P. E. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, Italy 37. Ferrara. Museo Archeologico Nazionale I, Rome 1963.

Reusser, Ch. (ed.). Spina100. Dal mito alla scoperta. Catalogo della mostra. Teseo Editore, Rome, 2022. (bilingual edition in Italian and in English)

Sassatelli, G., V. Nizzo, and T. Trocchi (eds). Spina Etrusca. Un grande porto nel Mediterraneo. Catalogo della mostra. ARA Edizioni, 2023.

The national archeological museum of Ferrara: the museum of the ancient city of Spina. SAGEP Editori, 2021.