LOT 0111

Roman Oinochoe with Head of a Boy

5TH CENTURY AD OR LATER

12 3/4" (244 grams, 32.5cm).

A bronze vessel with the body formed as the head of a boy with small features and large lenticular eyes, straight hair combed and shaped; square-section neck above with scooped pouring lip and dolphins to the rim, curved strap handle with seated putto playing a syrinx.

From the private collection of a UK gentleman; acquired from a London gallery in 2008; formerly in a 1980s collection.

In Etruria, bronze and terracotta wine jars, known as oinochoes, olpes, and kantharoi, were often modeled after the shape of a human head. Many of them featured satyrs and maenads, attendants of Dionysus, the god of wine. This vessel is a later Roman version of this Etruscan type and would have been used to serve guests at a symposium, known as a commissatio during the Roman period. The symposium was part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation, and which was a key Hellenic - and later, Roman - social institution.