Rhyton in the Shape of a Dog's Head

In the early 5th century BC, Athenian workshops made drinking vessels in the shape of heads, of rams, mules and dogs among them. The head was pressed in a mould, and a wheel-made rim on top gave the painter a band to decorate. This hound's head was painted by the Brygos Painter.

On that band he painted a drinking party, the very occasion the vessel was made for. On one side a youth with a lyre and a man with a barbitos, a deeper-toned lyre, recline together. On the other a man with a lyre reclines alone beside the words "the boy is beautiful".

The museum calls it a rhyton, a drinking horn, while Beazley's lists treat it as a cup in the form of a head. It was found in a chamber tomb in the Celle cemetery at Falerii. Another dog's head given to the same painter, moulded in two halves, came from a tomb at Aleria on Corsica.