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Pitcher (oinochoe) in the Wild Goat style, with bands of flowers, animals, and birds

Greek, East Greek
Late Orientalizing Period
about 625–600 B.C.
Place of Manufacture: East Greece, South Ionia, Greece, Miletos

Medium/Technique Ceramic
Dimensions Height: 28.4 cm (11 3/16 in.); diameter: 23.2 cm (9 1/8 in.)
Credit Line Gift of Mrs. S. T. Morse
Accession Number03.89
NOT ON VIEW
ClassificationsVessels

Catalogue Raisonné Fairbanks, Vases (MFA), no. 291.
DescriptionMilesian "Wild Goat" oinochoe. Body flares from foot, well-defined shoulder. Trefoil mouth. From bottom to neck, three bands: (1) lotus flowers and buds, (2) two dogs and four goats, (3) palmettes, ducks, bulls, goat. Guilloche on the neck. Creamy slip. Crack on the right side.

Wild Goat Style is an "Orientalizing" (using motifs originating in the Near East) animal frieze style of East Greece. The style particularly involves repetitive animal friezes, especially featuring wild goats; dense use of filler motifs, especially floral motifs (often rosettes); subsidiary patterned friezes (guilloche, lotus or bud friezes); and large floral centerpieces (spirals, lotus, palmettes). This oinochoe is Milesian. Miletos was a major producer and exporter of fine, painted pottery like this; other subregions of East Greece also produced Wild Goat Style vases.
ProvenanceBy 1903: Mrs. S. T. Morse Collection (purchased for her of E. Simeon, London, and stated by him to have been found in his own excavations in the island of Rhodes); gift of Mrs. S. T. Morse to MFA, January 1903