Statuette of a centaur,

ca. 530 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.