Music Lesson
- Title
- Music Lesson
- LC Subject
- Writing
- Repository
- J. Paul Getty Museum
- Alternative
- Attic Red-Figure Cup Wine Cup with a Boy Holding a Lyre Courting Scenes
- Creator
- Douris Python
- Photographer
- Lowenstam, Steven
- Creator Display
- Douris (Greek vase painter, active ca. 500-475 BCE); attributed to Python (Greek potter, active ca. 500-480 BCE)
- Description
- Scenes of the daily lives of Athenian schoolboys decorate this red-figure cup. In addition to basic literacy and mathematics, Greek boys were trained in athletics and music. On the interior of the cup, a boy holding a lyre stands in front of a bearded man, who must be his music teacher. On the outside, men and boys form similar scenes. The imagined walls of the schoolroom are hung with musical instruments and athletic equipment: lyres, string bags with knucklebones, sponges, and aryballoi. The scenes on this cup are not purely educational, however. On one side of the vase, a boy holds a hare on his lap, while on the other, a man offers a hare to another boy. In addition to serving as a classroom, the gymnasion in its role as the center of Greek physical and intellectual life was also the center of romantic courtship. Hares were popular love gifts in the homosexual relationships between older men and boys favored by the Athenian aristocracy in the early 500s B.C. --J. Paul Getty Museum Bareiss Loan: S.82.AE.36 May, Helmut, ed. Weltkunst aus Privatbesitz, exh. cat. (Cologne: Kunsthalle Köln, 1968), cat. no. A 31; fig. 13.; Bothmer, Dietrich von.
- Inscription
- Inscription: Translated from Greek: "Hippodamas is beautiful". Douris, painter. Interior: in greek. Translated: "Douris painted [this]." --J. Paul Getty Museum
- View
- Interior
- Coverage
- Athens, Periféreia Protevoúsis, Greece (creation) Molly and Walter Bareiss Collection (owner)
- Temporal
- ca. 480 BCE
- Subject
- Busts, TCs, Stelar, etc. Linear B, Dipylon Jug, Hymn Apollo, Rosetta Stone
- Style Period
- Red-figure Attic (Mainland Greek pottery styles)
- Work Type
- kylikes
- Date
- -0485/-0475
- View Date
- 1990-03-29
- Identifier
- Lowenstam_VRC_07630
- Item Locator
- Box 17, Section 25
- Rights
- In Copyright
- Dc Rights Holder
- University of Oregon, Department of Classics
- Local Collection Name
- Steven Lowenstam Collection
- Type
- Image
- Format
- image/tiff
- Measurements
- Height: 11.9 cm; Width [handles]: 38.9 cm; Diameter: 31.2 cm
- Material
- terracotta
- Set
- Lowenstam Collection of Ancient Western Art and Archaeology
- Primary Set
- Lowenstam Collection of Ancient Western Art and Archaeology
- Institution
- University of Oregon
- Cultural Context
- Attic (culture)
- Id Current Repository
- 86.AE.290
