Italo-Geometric Bird Askos (Oil Vessel): Hunter (Herakles?) and Stag

A CLOSER LOOK

The museum identifies this ceramic as ceramic and credits Bisenzio Class.

The museum's collection notes: This bird-shaped askos (oil vessel), with a tall filling spout and a pierced beak for pouring, perhaps held perfumed oil for a funerary function. Although the shape likely stems from Italian tradition, the abundantly painted geometric decoration, covering nearly every available surface, derives originally from Greece. Thus scholars have suggested that an immigrant Greek potter working in Etruria may have made the vessel. The sole narrative scene shows a man with a spear leading an antlered animal. If not an anonymous hunter, this could be the earliest known representation of the hero Herakles performing his third labor: capturing the golden-a