Music Lesson by Phintias

This wonderful vase is one the first depictions of a subject which subsequently becomes more popular in Attic vase-painting, the music lesson. This one is typical in showing a seated youth, plektron in hand, strumming his lyre. Before him an older man, sitting on a klismos (chair) instead of a diphros (stool), holds the strings of his instrument still. Two onlookers, a draped youth, enveloped in his himation, and an older man leaning on his walking stick stand nearby. What makes this scene unusual is that its painter, Phintias, has labeled the music student Euthymides, the name of his younger colleague in the ceramics business. Such camaraderie is characteristic of the group of vase-painters whom Beazley dubbed the "Pioneers" because they were the first to realize the potential of the new red-figure technique invented ca. 530-520 B.C

Attic red-figured hydria, Attributed to Phintias

From Vulci, Etruria , Munich, Antikensammlungen

Height 45 cm