Skip to main content

Classics Museum Catalogue

  • Home
  • About
  • Collections
  • Object clusters
  • Artefacts or objects
  • Back to Classics Museum

SLLL

  • Back to School main pages

Related Sites

  • ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences
  • Research School of Humanities and the Arts
  • Australian National Internships Program

Breadcrumb

HomeClassics MuseumANU Classics Museum CatalogueArtefacts or ObjectsCorinthian Alabastron - 1963.02
Corinthian Alabastron - 1963.02

Acquisition number: 1963.02

Other images

Corinthian Alabastron
Corinthian Alabastron
Corinthian Alabastron, top
Corinthian Alabastron, bottom
Corinthian Alabastron
Corinthian Alabastron

Corinthian Alabastron. 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.

  • Object details
  • Bibliography
  • Catalogue

Title: Corinthian Alabastron - 1963.02

Acquisition number: 1963.02

Author or editor: J.R. Green

Culture or period: Early Corinthian.

Date: c. 615 - 590 BC.

Material: Clay - Terracotta

Object type: Vessels - Alabastron

Dimensions: 41mm (w) × 78mm (h)

Origin region or location: Greece

Origin city: Corinth.

Display case or on loan: 3

Keywords: Greek, Early Corinthian, Corinthian

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.

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.