Laconian Plastic Aryballos in the Form of a Bearded Man's Head

Later Greek writers described Sparta as a city of soldiers with no time for luxury, and that picture has stuck. This flask was made in Laconia, the territory of Sparta, around 570 BC, and it is anything but stern. It takes the shape of a man's head, with a moustache, a pointed beard and hair in tight curls, the features and the hair picked out in black paint. On the back of the head the potter added a phallus. The whole thing is 9 centimetres high, and part of the flask's mouth is missing.

An aryballos held scented oil, the kind Greek men rubbed into their skin, above all for exercise, and in the 6th century BC flasks in the shape of heads and animals were made in several Greek centres. In the same decades Laconian workshops were turning out fine painted pottery, bronzes and carved ivory, and some of it travelled overseas. This head once belonged to Jacob Hirsch, a dealer in antiquities and ancient coins, and the Louvre bought it from his collection in 1921.