Oinochoe (Pitcher) (640-625 BCE): Artwork and History

Oinochoe (Pitcher) (640-625 BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Greek; Corinth.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This jug was probably used to serve wine at gatherings. The pinched mouth forms a narrow channel that controls the flow of its contents when poured. The seventh century marks the beginning of the Archaic period (700–480 BC). In Corinth, vase painters embellished their pottery with creatures, both real and imaginary, and sometimes humans and gods. These artisans also explored new methods of decoration, often painting their subjects in silhouette with black gloss and added details by incising through the black to reveal the lighter clay below. Sometimes a reddish-purple or creamy white gloss was also added, as is the case here.

Object facts

• Title: Oinochoe (Pitcher)
• Date: 640-625 BCE
• Artist attribution: Greek; Corinth
• Place of origin: Corinth
• Medium: terracotta, black-figure
• Dimensions: 24.8 × 18.2 × 18.2 cm (9 3/4 × 7 1/8 × 7 1/8 in.)
• Type: Vessel
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1892.255

Collection credit

Museum Purchase Fund

View the original

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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.