Amphora (Storage Jar) (460-450 BCE): Artwork and History

Amphora (Storage Jar) (460-450 BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Attributed to the Achilles Painter Greek; Athens.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This vase has a distinctive shape characterized by an elongated ovoid body on a thick disk foot, an offset flaring neck, an inverted lip with grooves for a lid, and handles that rise from the shoulder and curve below the height of the mouth to join the neck. The type is called a Nolan amphora, after Nola, Italy, the site where the first examples of this shape were discovered and where this example was also found. It probably contained wine, olives, or oil. Nolan amphorae are small, usually less than fifteen inches high. Figures are drawn between the handles on the front and back. Below, a length of meander pattern provides a ground line.

Object facts

• Title: Amphora (Storage Jar)
• Date: 460-450 BCE
• Artist attribution: Attributed to the Achilles Painter Greek; Athens
• Place of origin: Athens
• Medium: terracotta, red-figure
• Dimensions: 34.3 × 18.2 cm (13 1/2 × 7 1/8 in.); Diam.: 18.2 cm (7 1/8 in.)
• Type: Vessel
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1889.17

Collection credit

Gift of Philip D. Armour and Charles L. Hutchinson

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.