Column-Krater (Mixing Bowl) (about 460 BCE): Artwork and History

Column-Krater (Mixing Bowl) (about 460 BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Attributed to a Member of the Earlier Mannerist Group Greek; Athens.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The Greeks diluted their wine by blending it with water. The master of ceremonies at the symposium, or drinking party for men, determined the ratio of wine to water, both of which were poured into a large mixing bowl, like this one. This particular shape is called a column krater after its columnar handles. It is decorated with a mythological scene. Salmoneus, king of Elis, pretended to be Zeus by imitating the sound of thunder and the appearance of lightning. Angered at his impudence, here Zeus strikes Salmoneus dead with a real lightning bolt.

Object facts

• Title: Column-Krater (Mixing Bowl)
• Date: about 460 BCE
• Artist attribution: Attributed to a Member of the Earlier Mannerist Group Greek; Athens
• Place of origin: Athens
• Medium: terracotta, red-figure
• Dimensions: 46.5 × 45.6 × 38 cm (18 1/4 × 18 × 15 in.)
• Type: Vessel
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1889.16

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.