Pyxis (Container for Personal Objects) (late 6th century BCE): Artwork and History

Pyxis (Container for Personal Objects) (late 6th century BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Greek; Athens.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

There is a continuous frieze around the body of the vessel consisting of seated draped youths, standing draped females, naked youths with spears, runners and young riders. The draped male figures, seated and standing, all seem to be youths (they wear long chitons and himatia) and hold staffs. The standing women have lost their added white paint. A single naked boy is introduced in the frieze behind one of the women. There are mock inscriptions (dots) in the field.

Object facts

• Title: Pyxis (Container for Personal Objects)
• Date: late 6th century BCE
• Artist attribution: Greek; Athens
• Place of origin: Greece
• Medium: terracotta, black-figure
• Dimensions: 18 × 14.2 × 20 cm (7 1/8 × 7 5/8 × 7 7/8 in.)
• Type: Vessel
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1889.13

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.