Fragment from Black-Figure Amphora (Storage Vessel): Musicians (c. 530–520 BCE): Art, History and Details

Fragment from Black-Figure Amphora (Storage Vessel): Musicians (c. 530–520 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Two musicians appear on this amphora fragment. The first, long-haired and bearded, holds an instrument that is mostly lost, but with a curving arm that identifies it as a lyre, probably of the standard (chelys, or tortoiseshell) type. His bearded companion, with curly hair and an ornate robe, plays a concert kithara, a more elaborate seven-stringed instrument.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment from Black-Figure Amphora (Storage Vessel): Musicians
• Date: c. 530–520 BCE
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 14 cm (5 1/2 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1924.536

A detail from the museum

Vase painters depict four different kinds of lyres, or stringed musical instruments.

Collection credit

Gift of J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Boulter, C. G., Jenifer Neils, and Gisela Walberg. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971.

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.