A Name for the Cerberus Painter?

Abstract

The small group of white-ground votive plaques from the Athenian Acropolis which is listed below is distinguished both by the technique of the pieces which comprise it and by their decoration. For their size their thinness is unusual among the Acropolis plaques, some being as little as 0·4 cm. thick, and the thickest only 0·8 cm. Their surface is prepared with a thick and often glossy white ground, far heavier than that generally employed on plaques. All are bordered by two thin lines, no. 5 having a maeander upper border also, and the inscriptions on nos. 3, 4, 5, 8 all have the same small, neat, and well-spaced letters. From their technique they may then be assigned to a single workshop: for their decoration, several (nos. 1–5 below) have already been grouped together as the work of the Cerberus Painter by Roebuck (AJA XLIII 467 ff.), some of which Beazley assigns rather to the manner of that painter (nos. 3–5: ARV 56, nos. 1–3). There seems, however, to be little in the decoration of these plaques and of the fragments (nos. 6–8) which I have added below which is incompatible with their attribution to a single hand, and the technical considerations outlined above lend weight to the argument.