1963.02

Corinthian Alabastron

Purchased. Ht 7.8cm; diam. 4.1cm.

Intact save for some slight damage to the surface in places. Black paint misfired red in an area of the lion’s body.

On the body, a confronted lion and bird. Red was added for the bird’s wing, on the lion’s ear, brow, tongue, shoulder and belly and for stripes on its flanks. On the neck of the vessel are tongues and there is a rosette on the base about a central indentation. There are tongues on the top of the lid and dots about its edge.

The alabastron belongs to the so-called Early Corinthian phase of vase-painting which may best be dated ca 615-590 bc. (For a discussion of the absolute chronology, see J.-P. Descœudres, Eretria V [1976] 50-54.) The clay of this vase is rather pinker than is usual for Corinthian as a result of its partial misfiring. Its decoration, however, is typical of its place and period, both in technique (incised detail and liberal use of added red) and subject matter. The lion is now of the Assyrian type, heavy and square-maned, where Protocorinthian painters had used the Syro-Hittite type, lighter and with less mane. The inner detail is more for decorative effect than anatomical correctness.

The alabastron was a shape introduced into Corinthian pottery from the east in the mid-seventh century and was used as a flask for perfume or perfumed oils. It was the favourite form of perfume flask in the later seventh century but was displaced in the sixth by the globular aryballos. On Early Corinthian alabastra, see Payne, Necrocorinthia 28lff., with additions by Hopper, Annual of the British School at Athens (1894/5-) 44, 1949, 192ff. Payne discussed the shape at p. 23l; see also his p. 74 n. 9 on the difficulty of distinguishing swans from geese.

Sotheby (London), Sale Cat., 29 April 1963, no. 174; J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U., Canberra, 1981, 20.