Fragmentary Red-Figure Kylix (Drinking Cup): Warrior Sacrificing Ram (c. 490–480 BCE): Art, History and Details

Fragmentary Red-Figure Kylix (Drinking Cup): Warrior Sacrificing Ram (c. 490–480 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Scenes of sacrifice are rare in Greek art before the late 4th century BC. The warrior may be sacrificing the ram as a magical act before battle to save his own and his company's lives. A faded inscription, partly lost, does not identify the warrior; rather, it praises Chairias, probably an Athenian youth. Enough remains of the exterior of the cup to show that it was undecorated.

Object facts

• Title: Fragmentary Red-Figure Kylix (Drinking Cup): Warrior Sacrificing Ram
• Date: c. 490–480 BCE
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Diameter: 10.1 cm (4 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1926.242

A detail from the museum

The artist has used added red pigment for the blood of the ram.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Beazley, J. D. Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
• 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.