Anna Petrakova

The State Hermitage museum owns over 350 cups and fragments of Little-Masters cups of all the existing types (without counting the fl oral band-cups). Twelve of them, including one whole lip-cup, two fragments of lip-cups and nine fragments of band-cups can be attributed to the Tleson Painter, one of the most typical and prolifi c of the Little-Masters. Two fragments of the lip-cup with palmettes and inscriptions can be dated c. 550 BC, early phase of the painter, while the whole lip-cup of Beazley’s type LI with siren inside can be dated to the middle phase of the painter in Fellmann’s chronology. Two fragments of band-cups with typical for the painter description of fi ghting cocks, two fragments of band-cups with sirens, four fragments of band-cups with palmettes and one item with inscriptions can be attributed to the Tleson Painter of the middle phase, 550–530 BC. The whole cup and seven fragments were found on Berezan island, three fragments in Nymphaion and one in Olbia. All together these fragments form about 11% of the whole quantity of the cups by the Tleson painter the provenance of which we can defi ne. This fact makes Northern Black Sea the second main direction of export of the cups by this painter, setting it after Italy and Sicily (about 35%).