The François Vase

c. 570–560 BCE

Black-figure terracotta volute krater, 66 cm high · Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence

A huge wine-mixing bowl signed by both its painter and its potter, carrying about 270 figures and 121 painted name labels. It was found in pieces in an Etruscan tomb near Chiusi in the 1840s.

The main band shows the gods arriving at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the parents of Achilles.
Dionysus carries a wine jar and turns his face to the viewer, rare at this date.
On each handle, Ajax carries the dead Achilles.
In 1900 a museum guard smashed it into 638 pieces; it has been reassembled twice.

The goddess Eris, left off the guest list for this wedding, threw a golden apple “for the fairest” among the guests, which led to the Judgement of Paris and the Trojan War.

Volute krater: A krater whose handles curl into scrolls (volutes) above the rim.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain