The shape is that of a bell-krater, a bowl for mixing wine and water, placed on the table at a banquet. A repair was carried out presumably soon after the vase’s discovery. The Melbourne vase is intact except for the left handle which had broken off in antiquity and snapped in two. from Athens to the Greek cities of South Italy. If so, it would have been but one of many hundreds of red-figured vases exported in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. It is not unlikely, then, that the bell-krater now in Melbourne was unearthed somewhere in Campania. Most of the vases in the two large collections formed at this time by Sir William Hamilton came from this region. These years, the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, were the most productive for private excavation in the many ancient cemeteries of Campania, the district around Naples.

Corbett to the catalogue of Christie’s sale.

2 For the early history of the Nostell Priory collection, see the important introduction by P. In the following year Campbell’s collection of antiquities was bought by Charles Winn, of Nostell Priory, and shipped to England in February 1819. Campbell, who was at that time residing in Naples. We do not know exactly where the vase was found or when, but by 1817 it had come into the possession of a certain Abbé H.

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