Piecing together the story of a pair of Makron’s fragmented cups

In 2022, an Athenian red-figured cup attributed to Makron was returned to Italy by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The cup had been acquired in fragments, through purchase and gift, from multiple sources over several years, starting with two fragments from the restorer Fritz Bürki in 1978. A second cup, also attributed to Makron, was acquired in a parallel way. The sources for the fragments from both cups point to galleries collectors and donors – Summa Galleries, Frieda Tchachos, Elizabeth Hecht, and Dietrich von Bothmer – who have been associated with other material that has been repatriated to Italy in recent years. It is suggested that some of the incised ‘signatures’ by Hieron that are found on cups attributed to Makron may have been applied since antiquity.