Geometric Oinochoe with a Snake Handle
Unknown (Thebes) · c. 735-720 BC
A wine jug half a metre tall carries a surprise on its handle: a modelled clay snake that climbs up towards the toothed lip of the spout. The painted decoration is organised in horizontal zones in the manner of the Geometric period. On the neck two pairs of wrestlers grapple on either side of a panel of zigzags and dotted lozenges, with rosettes of dots scattered around them. On the shoulder four birds face each other in framed panels, and the belly is ringed with false spirals, concentric circles and bands of pattern. The jug has been reassembled, and missing parts of the neck, the snake and the body have been filled in plaster.
The vase was made and found at Thebes in Boeotia in the last decades of the eighth century BC, at the end of the Geometric period, when painters were beginning to add human figures and animals to their patterns. Wrestling pairs and birds are among the first living subjects to appear on Greek pottery, and the snake, a creature of the underworld, suggests the jug was made for a burial. The Louvre bought it in 1887.
Did You Know? The clay snake crawling up the handle links this wine jug to the world of the dead, for whom it was probably made.
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