Black-Figure Olpe (Wine Jug): Rooster (c. 575 BCE): Art, History and Details

Black-Figure Olpe (Wine Jug): Rooster (c. 575 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Although this wine jug, simply decorated with a rooster and two lotus blossoms, looks much like Athenian vases, it was made in Corinth. The paler buff color of the Corinthian clay can be seen on the handle and in some areas of loss, but the background of the decorated area has been covered with a red slip imitating the reddish, iron-rich Attic (or Athenian) clay. On the back of the vase, two reserved (red) crescent shapes may represent eyes, like those painted in much more detail on many drinking cups of this period.

Object facts

• Title: Black-Figure Olpe (Wine Jug): Rooster
• Date: c. 575 BCE
• Culture: Greek, Middle/Late Corinthian
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 35.5 cm (14 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1924.355

A detail from the museum

Roosters appear frequently on vases—alone, in cock fights, and as love gifts.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Amyx, Darrell A. Corinthian Vase-Painting of the Archaic Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
• "A note on Greek Design: Recent Accessions of Pottery." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 11, no. 10. (December 1924): 198-199

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.