Pottery: red-figured hydria (water-jar). Heracles killing Nessos. Heracles, youthful, beardless, with lion-skin over head, forepaws knotted on his chest, striding to right, brandishing over his head his club; with his left hand he has seized by the throat Nessos, who has fallen on his right knee to the right and looks back (in three-quarter face), vainly trying with his right to loosen the grasp of Heracles; he is bald on the crown, but has a small circular patch of hair over the centre of the forehead; he has bushy hair at the back and beard, and horse's ears. His left arm passes behind the back of Deianeira, who moves to right, looking back and extending her right towards Heracles for assistance; with her left she raises the edge of a veil which covers the back of her head and her left shoulder. She wears a long-sleeved chiton, a mantle, earrings with pendent palmettes, and a saccos. Over the back of Nessos is inscribed καλός. Large style with remains of severe period. Purple has been used for the veil of Deianeira, now faded to white; also for a wound in the crown of the Centaur, from which blood flows down his chest; and for the inscription. Brown inner markings, hair on cheek of Heracles, and shading of the outside of the lion-skin. Eye in archaic type, with dotted pupil and brown shading around the lid: the eyelashes of the Centaur are drawn in brown. The fringe of hair over the forehead is indicated in rows of black dots. The design curves up over the shoulder. Below, a strip of maeander; above, of alternate palmette and honeysuckle; round the lip, egg pattern; below the back handle, a small palmette; around the insertion of the side handles, tongue pattern. --The British Museum, A Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum, London, William Nicol, 1851; Walters, H B; Forsdyke, E J; Smith, C H, Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum, I-IV, London, BMP, 1893; Rawson, Jessica, Chinese Ornament: The Lotus and the Dragon, London, BMP, 1984; Walters, H B; Forsdyke, E J, Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: Great Britain 7, British Museum 5, London, BMP, 1930