Among the artifacts believed to come from the collections of Casa Savoia we can appreciate an Attic amphora with black figures, restored in 2002 by adding it to the fragments kept in the museum. Characterised by a reddish clay, typical of Attica (Greece), this class of pottery was widely spread between the middle of the eighth century and the end of the fourth century B.C. throughout the Mediterranean area, as it was considered an object of luxury and a sign of social distinction.
The figures were painted on the surface of the pot with a mixture of liquid clay and ferrous substances, which showed a glossy black colour through cooking
Two scenes decorate the sides. On the main one is depicted the capture of Cerberus (the infernal dog with three heads), the last of the twelve "Labours" of Heracles, of which only the club and part of the "leontè" remain (skin of the lion Nemeus, worn after the killing in the first of the Labours); only the head of Athena has been preserved among the deities who probably attended the scene.
The other side, better preserved, presents a genre scene, with the god Dionysus (Bacchus) sitting in the middle between satyrs and maenads (bacchae: women followers of the orgiastic cults of Dionysus), while some deities attend and participate in the banquet.
The comparisons on the style and the represented subjects, besides the accuracy of the execution, have induced to attribute the vase to the workshop of the "Painter of Priamo", ceramic painter who worked in Athens in the last decades of the 6th century. B. C. Many of his vases, (almost all of them were large were found in the rich necropolis of Etruria, during the excavations of the 18th and 19th centuries and later included in important museum collections.
