L’anfora orientalizzante etrusca del Pittore dell’Eptacordo già in collezione privata americana

The study concerns an amphora by the Eptacord Painter which, toge￾ther with the biconical krater from tomb 297 preserved in Cerveteri and the amphora preserved in Würzburg, constitutes the triad of vases known to date and attributed to the Painter. The Eptacord Painter was named as such by Marina Martelli in a study publi￾shed in 1988 because of the depiction of a male figure (Orpheus?) with a seven-stringed lyre on the amphora preserved in Würzburg. The amphora analysed in this study was among the objects seized in 2023 as part of the Manhattan District Attorney’s investiga￾tion into Edoardo Almagià (who had loaned it to the Princeton University Art Museum in 1998) and was returned to Italy from New York following an investigation by the Judicial Police. According to investigators, Almagià collaborated with Mauro Morani of Cerveteri, a tomb robber, forger and trafficker. Our vase depicts on side A the departu￾re of a warrior on a chariot with a charioteer (perhaps the departure of Iolaus (?) with Lapythos (?) for Lerna) and on side B the killing of the Lernaean Hydra by Heracles. If the interpretation of the scene is correct, it would be the oldest Etruscan depiction of the killing of the Lernaean Hydra found to date. Our vase is one of the earliest examples of a mythological-epic narrative tradition of Hellenic origin, which was to become increa￾singly complex and consistent in Etruria during the second half of the 7th century BC, revealing its epicentre in Cerveteri