Black-Figure Neck-Amphora (Storage Vessel): Animal Friezes (c. 600–580 BCE): Art, History and Details

Black-Figure Neck-Amphora (Storage Vessel): Animal Friezes (c. 600–580 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is St. Louis Painter (Etruscan, active at Vulci, c. 600–580 BCE).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Although seemingly simple in design, this amphora populated with animals (some mythological) and vegetal ornaments speaks to complex cultural intermingling in the ancient world. Known as “Etrusco-Corinthian,” the vase was made in Vulci, an Etruscan site with local workshops influenced by the Greek pottery imported there. These imports, especially from the ancient city of Corinth, helped to bring certain motifs and creatures borrowed from the Near East—such as the griffins here—to the Italian peninsula. Among several lively Etruscan elements on this vase are flowering rosettes, including one about to be eaten by a stag foraging in the upper band.

Object facts

• Title: Black-Figure Neck-Amphora (Storage Vessel): Animal Friezes
• Date: c. 600–580 BCE
• Creator attribution: St. Louis Painter (Etruscan, active at Vulci, c. 600–580 BCE)
• Culture: Etruscan (Etrusco-Corinthian)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 63.2 cm (24 7/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Etruscan
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1924.872

A detail from the museum

The same potter and painter (whether one person or two) also made vases now in Saint Louis and Paris.

Collection credit

Gift of J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Howard, Rossiter. "A Note on Greek Design: Recent Accessions of Pottery." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 11, no. 10 (1924): 198-99.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.