Lidded Amphora with Confronting Lions

Two lions face each other across a tree on the body of this amphora, one the mirror image of the other. Pairs of animals set symmetrically around a tree or a plant reached Etruria from the art of the Near East and the Greek east during the 7th century BC, on imported metalwork, ivories and painted pottery, and Etruscan craftsmen went on using the scheme for generations. By the time this jar was painted at Vulci, in the last decades of the 6th century BC, it was an old and familiar design.

The amphora has kept its lid. It was found in 1998 in the Osteria cemetery at Vulci, in a tomb the excavators named after the vases by the Micali Painter they found inside.