Amphora

About the Art

This object is an amphora, or storage vessel, with a narrow neck and two handles that make it easier to pour from. Made from terracotta, a reddish clay, it is done in the black-figure style, meaning that the natural color of the clay is used as a background and figures are painted on top, mostly in black. Gender is indicated by women being painted in white and men being painted in black—a type of visual shorthand.

Forms like the amphora are complicated and potters made them using a potter’s wheel, throwing multiple pieces of clay that could later be combined to make up a whole amphora. The handles would be the last thing added before being decorated. The figures were painted on using clay diluted with water, called slip, that turned black after it was fired.

The vessel depicts two scenes. In one, a man stands atop a quadriga, or chariot pulled by four horses side-by-side. In the other, the god Apollo—the god of music and poetry—plays a cithara, a stringed instrument and type of lyre.

FEATURED IMAGE
The Dayton Painter (Greek, Archaic period), Amphora, about 520 BCE, terra cotta with black-figure decoration, 13 x 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches (33 x 21.6 x 21.6 cm). Museum purchase, 1963.84