The platforms on which the performers stand indicate that they are participating in musical competitions. The figure on the obverse holds a kithara, the type of lyre used for performances. His pose and the wreath he wears suggest that he may already have won. The figures on the reverse are entirely absorbed, the flute player within himself, the boy projecting toward his audience.
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Musical contests: obverse, kithara-player
Musical contests: reverse, youth singing to double flute; at neck on each side, triple palmette
Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta neck-pelike (wine jar)
Period:Archaic
Date:ca. 500 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; black-figure
Dimensions:Overall: 10 1/2 x 6in. (26.7 x 15.3cm) diameter 5 11/16in. (14.5cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1907
Object Number:07.286.72
Richter, Gisela M. A., Marjorie J. Milne, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1922. Shapes of Greek Vases. New York.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Marjorie J. Milne. 1935. Shapes and Names of Athenian Vases. pp. 3–4, fig. 32, New York: Plantin Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 62, 203, pl. 43d, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Beck, Frederick A. G. 1975. Album of Greek Education: The Greeks at School and at Play. p. 41, figs. 235, 239, Sydney: Cheiron Press.
Pinney, Gloria Ferrari and Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway. 1979. Aspects of Ancient Greece no. 27, pp. 60–61, Allentown, Penn.: Allentown Art Museum.
Mertens, Joan R. 1998. "Some Long Thoughts on Early Cycladic Sculpture." Metropolitan Museum Journal, 33: p. 18, fig. 17.
Mertens, Joan R. 1998. "Some Long Thoughts on Early Cycladic Sculpture." Metropolitan Museum Journal, 33: p. 18, fig. 17.
Blundell, Sue. 2002. "Clutching at Clothes." Women's Dress in the Ancient Greek World, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ed. p. 166 n. 38, London: Gerald Duckworth.
Moore, Mary B. 2007. "The Princeton Painter in New York." Metropolitan Museum Journal, 42: pp. 21–56, fig. 28.
Oakley, John H. 2020. A Guide to Scenes of Daily Life on Athenian Vases. pp. 124–25, fig. 6.13, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
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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.
