Sculture del teatro romano di Catania: grandi tazze marmoree con fregio figurato

Among the sculptures of the Theater of Catania, two large marble cups decorated in bas-relief were found in fragments and at different times. One of them is documented by a portion of the basin found in 1938, today in the Catania Civic Museum; the second one is documented by a wide description of Vincenzo Bondice who bought a fragment from it, around the middle of the nineteenth century. Although the fragment pertaining to the second cup is now lost, the detailed description of Bondice allows us to evaluate its main typological and figurative aspects. The analysis of the surviving fragment, which can also be added to a support, once in the Biscari collection, may be pertinent to one of the two cups of the Theater, allows to ascribe their production to a "Neo-attic" workshop engaged in Catania for high commissions and for orders destinated to public places. Despite the partiality of the documentation, an important piece of the sculptural program prepared for the theatrical building of Catania, between the end of the Augustan age and the Julio-Claudian age, is reconstructed.