On view
Round aryballos (jar for holding oil) depicting dueling warriors and mounted youths,
ca. 610–590 BCE
Centaurs were mythical creatures that joined the head and torso of a human man to the body of a horse. How these forms were combined did not become consistent in Greek art until the seventh to early sixth century BCE. Comparing the horse and rider depicted in bronze and on the oil jar with the statuette of a centaur, it is possible to reconstruct how artisans conflated and fused the man and the animal into the centaur’s hybrid body. Each of these objects was used in a different context and for a different function. The aryballos would have held a small amount of perfumed oil, the bronze statuette of a horse and rider was possibly a votive offering in a religious sanctuary, and the simple modeling on the back of the centaur statuette suggests that it was part of the sculptural attachments for a bronze vessel or tripod.
Information
ca. 610–590 BCE
Europe, Greece, Corinth
- F. F. Jones and R. Goldberg, Ancient art in the Art Museum: Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960)., p. 10; p. 11 (illus.)
- Benson, J. L. "Corinthian vases at Wellesley College." American journal of archaeology 68, no. 2, (1964): p. 167-174., P. 169
- Darrell A. Amyx, "Observations on the Warrior Group", California studies in classical antiquity 2 (1969): p. 1-25., p. 7
- J. L. Benson, "Corinthian vases in the Art Museum Collection", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 31, no. 2 (1972): p. 8-19., fig. 15, p. 11 (illus.)
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 29 (illus.)
