Krater Fragment with Amazon Fighting Scene

380-360 BC. A substantial red-figure vessel sherd from a krater, the painted motif representing a fighting scene between the Greeks and Amazons, dressed similarly to the warriors of the Persian Achaemenid armies; the foreground with a warrior woman on horseback, holding a javelin with reversed point, ready to be thrown, wearing a soft Phrygian cap and a short chiton worn over an ependytes, long decorated trousers, upper tunic fastened by two crossed belts, riding bareback on a fierce horse with short mane; beside her two Amazon warriors, one dressed in similar chiton and brandishing a typical pelta-shaped Thracian shield, the other woman laying dead or wounded in the foreground; to the right side of the fragment part of a Greek hoplon shield is visible, two partially preserved figures of Amazon warriors to each corner. See Von Bothmer, D., Amazons in Greek Art, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1957; Patten, A.E., Addressing the Other: The Amazon in Greek Art, University Honors Theses, Portland, Paper 24, 2013; Christie’s, Antiquities, London, 3 July 2018, London, 2018, see pp.54-55, for a work by the same painter.188 grams, 22cm (8 3/4"). Property of a London businessman; purchased on the Brussels art market, 2007; formerly in an old Belgian collection; accompanied by an archaeological expertise by Dr. Raffaele D’Amato. In its mythological prehistory, Athens was attacked by the Amazons, a tribe of mythical warrior-women whose homeland lay beyond the Black Sea. Theseus, the legendary king of Attica, fought against the invaders and married Antiope, the Amazon queen. The Amazons, in the paintings of famous Greek red Attic ceramist like the painter of Eretria (440-410 BC, Met.31.11.13), the Dwarf painter (440-430 BC, Met. Accession number 56.171.42), the Painter of the Woolly Satyrs (450 BC, accession number 07.286.84 ), and many others, were represented as cavalrymen and warriors of the new enemy invader, the Achaemenid Persians. Very fine condition.