Lekythos with an Aulos Player and a Singer

Two bearded men in long cloaks face each other on this oil flask. One plays the aulos, a pair of reed pipes blown together, with a sound closer to an oboe than to a flute. The other sings, holding a cloth and a shallow bowl. That bowl, a phiale, was used to pour offerings of wine to the gods, so the scene may show music at a libation rather than a performance for its own sake. The painting does not settle it.

Much of the flask is lost, and what survives stands on a clear mount. Its rounded body is an early form of lekythos that scholars call sub-Deianeira, after a flask painted with Deianeira, the wife of Herakles. The Amasis Painter decorated it around the middle of the 6th century BC. In the museum it is shown beside a water jar by Lydos, a painter of the same generation.