Man with lyre and staff, woman with lamp, on opposite sides of door
The subject concerns an Athenian reveler at the end of a bibulous evening. There has been considerable debate as to whether the man is returning home or calling on a hetaira (prostitute). Of exceptional architectural interest is the abbreviated depiction of the front of a house with the solid door and the tiled roof.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta oinochoe: chous (jug)
Period:Classical
Date:ca. 430–420 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; red-figure
Dimensions:H. 9 5/16 in. (23.6 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Fletcher Fund, 1937
Object Number:37.11.19
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1939. "Two Athenian Jugs." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 34(10): pp. 231–32, fig. 2.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1944, 1949. Greek Painting: The Development of Pictorial Representation from Archaic to Graeco-Roman Times. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 102, 242, pl. 82f, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1966. The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans. p. 135, fig. 641, London: Phaidon Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1970. Perspective in Greek and Roman Art. p. 35, n. 2, fig. 157, New York and London: Phaidon Press.
Robertson, Martin and Cambridge University Press. 1975. A History of Greek Art, Vols. 1 and 2. p. 429, pl. 32e, Cambridge, England.
Maas, Martha and Jane McIntosh Snyder. 1989. Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece. pp. 115, 132, fig. 7, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Cohen, Beth. 2000. Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art pp. 210–1, fig. 8.3, Leiden: Brill.
Sutton, Robert. 2004. "Family Portraits: Recognizing the Oikos on Attic Red-Figure Pottery." Charis: Essays in Honor of Sara A. Immerwahr, Hesperia Supplement, 33, Anne P. Chapin, ed. pp. 331–3, fig. 17.3, Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Mitchell, Alexandre G. 2009. Greek Vase-painting and the Origins of Visual Humour. pp. xi, 64 n. 105, 65–66, 90 n. 184, 202 n. 238, fig. 20, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Corner, Sean and Prof. Nancy Rabinowitz. 2011. "Bringing the Outside In: The Andron as Brother and the Symposium's Civic Sexuality." Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BCE-200 CE, Allison Glazebrook and Madeleine M. Henry, eds. pp. 62–63, fig. 3.1, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Oakley, John H. 2020. A Guide to Scenes of Daily Life on Athenian Vases. pp. 8–9, fig. 1.2, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Descamps-Lequime, Sophie and Violaine Jeammet. 2023. "De l'argile au bronze : au commencement était le plastès." Pratiques d'ateliers dans la Grèce et l'Égypte anciennes : du coroplathe au bronzier. p. 107, no. 21, Villeneuve-d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
