Frog-Shaped Guttus (Oil Flask) (300s BCE): Art, History and Details

Frog-Shaped Guttus (Oil Flask) (300s BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Guttus is a Latin word referring to a small vessel with vertical spout and ring handle, probably used for pouring small amounts of precious liquids. Often, mold-made ceramic gutti take the form of animals, with realistic painted decoration. Here, the lifelike frog features black stripes and alternating black and white circles.

Object facts

• Title: Frog-Shaped Guttus (Oil Flask)
• Date: 300s BCE
• Culture: South Italian, Apulian
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Diameter: 1.5 cm (9/16 in.); Overall: 5.8 x 11.2 x 9.1 cm (2 5/16 x 4 7/16 x 3 9/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - South Italy
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1985.176

A detail from the museum

The philosopher Plato famously compared the Greeks living along Mediterranean coastlines to “frogs around a pond.”

Collection credit

Gift of Keith P. Smith

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Kozloff, Arielle P. "Two South Italian Vases: Fish Plate and Frog Bottle." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 10 (1986): 406-14.
• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1985." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (1986)

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.