The Flickr Kalanthos Image Generatr

Dionysos, the god of wine, and his retinue decorate this bronze vessel called a situla. Across the middle of the vessel, Dionysos reclines in a chariot drawn by two panthers, one ridden by Eros, the young god of love. Various followers accompany Dionysos: a maenad, a goat-legged Pan playing the pipes, and satyrs. This bucket-shaped vessel, now missing its original handle, imitates a particular basket shape that the Greeks called a kalathos. Since the kalathos was used to gather the grape harvest, this vessel's form is cleverly connected to its Dionysiac subject matter.

The technique used to decorate this situla is unusual. Strips of tin, either plain or with figural cut-outs, were laid over the bronze for contrasting color effects.

Gallo-Roman, ca. 210-230 CE. Bronze with tin plating. Provenance only goes back to 1991.

Getty Villa Museum, Pacific Palisades, California (96.AC.55)

A grapevine sprouting from the handle wraps around the surface of this kalathos, a vessel with a tapering body. Hanging bunches of grapes, birds, and ribbons floating in the breeze embellish the vine. An anonymous potter made the body of the kalathos in a mold, but he formed the vine and other decorations by hand and applied them while the clay was still wet. The grapevine indicates the vessel's use as a wine cup.

A lead glaze covers the vase, ranging in color from dark green on the exterior to gold on the interior. Although vitrified lead glazes had been used on pottery earlier in the Near East, they had long been out of use when the technique was revived in the first century B.C. Green-glazed pottery as a whole was probably meant to imitate the appearance of vessels made of precious metals. The form of this kalathos, as well as the decoration, was based on contemporary silver vessels.

Roman
Smyrna, Turkey
50-1 BCE

Getty Villa Museum (96.AE.209)