The oldest known vase by the Leonardo da Vinci of ancient Greece has emerged from hiding after two decades. Last seen in public at a June 1990 auction at Sotheby’s in New York, Euphronios’ Sarpedon kylix has gone on display at Rome’s Villa Giulia museum with no fanfare or public announcement. Making the appearance more significant, the cup has been repaired—fixing the damage done when a Swiss police officer dropped it during an inventory of antiquities seized from dealer Giacomo Medici at the Geneva Freeport in 1995. The “lost chalice” now shares a glass case with a handful of other vases in a room dedicated to artifacts returned to Italy by American museums and collectors. Its label, which has no accession number, describes it as coming from the Geneva raid (and doesn’t mention that, technically, it’s still Medici’s property, pending the resolution of his legal cases).

The cup is in good company: the case next to it holds another rare, signed Euphronios, a fragmentary krater depicting Athena that was sold at the same auction and later given to Italy by collector Shelby White. The repaired kylix has been on display since at least May (when I first spotted it there) and I’ve been waiting to see if there’d be any announcement before posting on it. As this is the biggest development in Greek pots for 2010, New Year’s Eve seemed like a good time. What remains to be seen is if it will ever get displayed alongside its bigger twin, the Met’s former “Euphronios Krater.” That vase, which depicts the same scene, is also at Villa Giulia, in a separate wing.

The New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman has published a terrific feature on “The Lost Chalice” and the road trip we took the other day to the overgrown Etruscan countryside. First we tromped around the long-sought site of the clandestine dig that four decades ago uncovered some of the world’s finest ancient art. Then I introduced him to a key character from “The Lost Chalice,” the last known surviving member of the tomb-robbing team that unearthed the haul. And on the way back into Rome we stopped to see the biggest prize from the illicit excavation—the Euphronios krater— itself in a new context at the Villa Giulia museum, far from its former home in New York’s Met.
Stolen Beauty: A Greek Urn’s Underworld

The Sarpedon krater by Euphronios went on display a few weeks ago at its new permanent (until further notice) home at Rome’s Villa Giulia museum. The Metropolitan Museum of Art returned the krater to Italy in January 2008.

Behind the krater is the huge kylix potted by Euphronios and painted by Onesimos—the one the J. Paul Getty Museum surrendered to Italy in 1999, prompting Roman art dealer Giacomo Medici to hand over three fragments from the cup. The fragments, which haven’t been glued into the previously restored kylix, are also in the display case.