The bronze volute krater from Derveni, containing the ashes of a man and a woman, was excavated in a late fourth-century bc ancient Macedonian cemetery near Thessalonica in 1962, and published in a dedicated monograph by Eugenia Giouri in 1978. The Derveni excavations were eventually published by P Themelis and J Touratsoglou in 1997. The krater is spectacular, decorated with mythological figures and animal friezes in relief, as well as free-standing statuettes of maenads and satyrs on the shoulders. The iconography draws on the circle of Dionysus, god of wine and of a mystery cult that promised its initiates a blessed afterlife. The rim of the krater carries an inlaid silver inscription declaring itself (in Thessalian dialect) the property of Asteion son of Anaxagoras of Larissa.

Giouri had reached the conclusion that the krater was produced in 330–320 bc in a Greek city of the Chalcidice peninsula. She detected Athenian influence, mainly because it reproduces a number of maenads known from neo-Attic marble reliefs of the first century bc, which are thought to copy Classical prototypes. The maenads on the Derveni krater are the earliest extant representations of these sculptural types. Giouri was compelled to compare the bronze krater with marble sculpture for lack of local comparanda, as the art of Macedon was virtually unknown at the time. Thirty years on, large quantities of gold, silver and bronze vessels have come to light in controlled excavations, along with many other examples of visual Macedonian culture, which is now further illuminated thanks to a spate of publications (primarily in Greek) and international exhibitions. Even though the art of Athens is still vital to our understanding of the artistic production in Macedonia, the ‘athenocentric’ approach is now obsolete. From the extant evidence it appears that the art of Macedonia was eclectic, reflecting disparate influences from Thrace, Athens, Corinthia, Ionia and Achaemenid Persia. The great riches accumulated in Macedonia after Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire turned the Macedonian elite into patrons of the arts. Macedon became a magnet for artists from various part of Greece. Some of these may have settled locally. Macedonian metalworking is attested by Livy and by the occasional signature of artists with Macedonian names on silver vessels recovered from Macedonian tombs of the late fourth century.

With all this new evidence to hand, a reassessment of Macedonian metalwork would have been timely. For a book that launches a new series of ‘Art and Architecture in Context’, the approach here is remarkably old-fashioned, not to say disappointing. The author has chosen to disregard the wealth of new archaeological evidence, following instead in the footsteps of her predecessor, who associated the krater with the art of Athens. The Athenians did not bury metal vessels in tombs like the Macedonians, and we are therefore in the dark about their metalwork. This has not deterred Barr-Sharrar from attributing the Derveni krater to Athens. Even though dealing with metalwork, she has used works in other media as a basis for comparison – for example, marble sculpture and clay pottery. But we do not know how conservative or how innovative metal vessels might have been. She does not accept Giouri’s dating of the krater to the last quarter of the fourth century but has no evidence to support her alternative date.

She suggests that because clay volute kraters ceased to be produced in Athens around 370 bc, the Derveni krater, having borrowed their shape, cannot post-date them. To begin with, the demise of the Attic volute krater is now placed around 390 bc. In addition, clay volute kraters were plentiful in Apulia in the second half of the fourth century, and the artistic exchange between Macedonia and south Italy is now beyond doubt. The volutes decorated with heads on the Derveni krater find their closest parallel in Apulian clay volute kraters. And the elongated proportions of Dionysus on the Derveni krater are reminiscent of the male figures of the Sicyonian sculptor Lysippus, Alexander the Great’s favourite artist. Far from resembling Dionysus on the east pediment of the Parthenon, this god here is closest to Dionysus on the Lysicrates Monument, dated to 335/4 bc.

The author’s surprising suggestion that many metal vessels buried in Macedonian tombs in the last quarter of the fourth century were antiques, originally produced in early fourth-century Athens, comes without an explanation of what may have triggered this massive burial of heirlooms at exactly that time. She even goes so far as to suggest that the gold kraters paraded in the Grand Procession of Ptolemy ii were antiques, gifts from various Greek cities to the king’s ancestors.

In sum, the premise of this book is based on guesswork, disregarding both archaeological context and recent scholarship on the art of Macedon, and should be treated with caution.