Oinochoe (Pitcher) in the Shape of a Female Head

about 450 BCE

Attributed to the Canessa Class
Greek; Athens

Three manufacturing techniques were employed to produce this vessel. The lower portion, in the shape of a woman’s face, was made in a mold; the shoulder, neck, and mouth of the pitcher were formed on a potter’s wheel; and the handle was fashioned by hand. The woman’s flesh and thick, centrally parted hair are the natural color of the clay, but her brows and the contours of her eyes and irises are drawn in black. Her sclerae are white, and her irises are brown.

Status: On View, Gallery 151
Department: Arts of the Ancient Mediterranean and Byzantium

Culture: Ancient Greek
Title: Oinochoe (Pitcher) in the Shape of a Female Head
Place: Athens (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 450 BCE
Medium: terracotta, red-figure
Dimensions: 14 × 6.7 × 8.9 cm (5 1/2 × 2 5/8 × 3 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Museum Purchase Fund
Reference Number: 1905.348
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/40894/manifest.json

Collection Eugène Piot: Antiquités, 18 July 1890 (Paris 1890), no. 174.
Daniel Catton Rich, “Three Plastic Vases in the Classical Collection,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 24, 6 (1930), p. 75, (fig. on left, p. 75).
John D. Beazley, Attic Red-figure Vase Painters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 1548, no. 17 (inv. no. wrongly given as 11.824).
Karen B. Alexander, “From Plaster to Stone: Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” in Karen Manchester, Recasting the Past: Collecting and Presenting Antiquities at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 25.

Art Institute of Chicago, The Human Figure in Early Greek Art, A Preview, Part One, Gallery 101A, September 1, 1988 – May 24, 1989.
Art Institute of Chicago, Of Gods and Glamour: The Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art, Gallery 151, November 11, 2012 - present.

Eugène Piot (1812-1890), Paris; sold, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 27-30, 1890, lot 174, to Charles L. Hutchinson (1854-1924) and Martin A. Ryerson (1856-1932), Chicago; on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1890-1905; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1905.

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