AN ATTIC RED-FIGURED RHYTON IN THE FORM OF A RAM’S HEAD, CIRCA 5TH CENTURY B.C.

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AN ATTIC RED-FIGURED RHYTON IN THE FORM OF A RAM'S HEAD, GREECE, CIRCA 5TH CENTURY B.C. Modelled in the form of a ram's head joined to a flaring cylindrical mouth, the vessel rises from the moulded animal protome to a wide everted rim, with a single looped strap handle springing from the back of the neck and returning to the lower wall. The ram's head is rendered naturalistically, with tightly curled horns picked out in ribbed relief, prominent almond eyes, a broad muzzle, and short pricked ears. The fleece is indicated by stippled and dotted patterning across the crown and cheeks, reserved in the pale clay against the surrounding black glaze, while the horns, eyes, and muzzle retain touches of added red and cream slip. Above the join, the cylindrical neck is decorated in the red-figure technique against a lustrous black ground. On the principal face a nude youth is shown seated, his body turned in three-quarter view, one leg extended and the other drawn back, raising a kylix to drink. Flanking palmette ornaments spring from the handle zone and frame the figural panel, their tendrils curling symmetrically across the black field. The drawing is confident and economical, the anatomy defined by fine relief lines, the interior details of the cup and the musculature summarily but assuredly indicated. The rhyton, from the Greek rhein (to flow), was a ceremonial drinking and libation vessel adopted by the Greeks from earlier Near Eastern and Achaemenid prototypes and adapted in Attic workshops to the vocabulary of the symposium. Animal-head rhyta of this class were thrown in two parts, the moulded protome joined to a wheel-made upper section, and were used both to pour libations and, tilted at the rim, to drink. The choice of the ram is not incidental: the animal carried associations with Hermes, with Dionysos, and with sacrifice, and its appearance on a symposium vessel bearing the image of a reclining drinker sets the ritual and the convivial registers in deliberate contact. The seated youth with kylix is a canonical figure of the Attic symposium repertoire, and its placement on a vessel that is itself a specialised instrument of the drinking gathering closes the circle between image and use. Attic red-figure production of the fifth century saw the plastic vase, in which the body of the vessel is itself sculpted as a head or figure, developed to a high standard by a small number of specialised workshops. Ram-head, mule-head, and female-head rhyta survive from this milieu, the ceramic body carrying the moulded protome with fired slip decoration of a quality equal to the standard vase-painting of the period. The material itself, fine Attic clay with its characteristic orange body and iron-rich black gloss, was the technological signature of the Kerameikos workshops and travelled widely across the Mediterranean as an export of considerable prestige. This rhyton exemplifies the union of sculptural modelling and red-figure draughtsmanship that distinguishes the Attic plastic vase at its most accomplished, where the ritual instrument of the symposium is at once a naturalistic animal head and a painted image of the drinker who holds it. Dimensions: Height: 21.5cm

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