The Journey of the Euphronios Krater

Sylvia Poggioli has more on the looting and eventual return of the Euphronios Krater to Italy.  In sharp contrast to Michael Kimmelman, Poggioli states “In its new home, Rome’s Villa Giulia museum, the Euphronios vase has been given a place of honor in a glass case with special cool lighting.”  Poggioli takes us to the tomb complex where the krater was looted.

Vernon Silver has written a forthcoming work, The Lost Chalice, detailing the illegal journey of the famous “hot pot”: 

“They started coming out and poking the ground with a spillo, a long pole, that could probe into the ground until they found something,” he says.

Silver says the ancient Etruscans bought and collected imported Greek vases. Euphronios was among the artists in Athens who made many of those objects specifically for export. 

Silver says that when the tomb robbers carted off the Euphronios masterpiece, they destroyed many clues that would help archaeologists understand the history and culture of the people buried in the Cerveteri tomb. “It’s like a page being ripped out of a book of Etruscan history and Greek history and world history, when you have the opportunity to see what was buried with what, and who those people were, and who they were friends with, and who they traded with, and you don’t have that anymore,” Silver says. “It’s a finite resource; there aren’t an infinite number of these tombs sitting around.”