ATTRIBUTED TO THE TYRRHENIAN GROUP, CIRCA 570-550 B.C.

The closest parallels for the style of the animals and monsters that populate the friezes on this hydria are found on vases of the Tyrrhenian Group, which frequently have such friezes encircling below the mythological scenes on the shoulders of amphorae (see for example the neck-amphora by the Timiades Painter, no. 56 in J. Boardman, Athenian Black Figure Vases). Hydriae of this unusual rounded-bodied form attributed to the Tyrrhenian Group are comparatively rare, and Beazley notes only two examples decorated only with animals and monsters, as here (Attic Black-figure Vase-painters, p. 104, no. 128 and Paralipomena, p. 43, plus a third example listed on the Beazley Archive Database no. 9029880).

This vase boasts a colorful ownership history. The Pitt Rivers Museum was founded in 1884 by Lieutenant General Augustus Pitt Rivers, a leading archaeologist and visionary anthropologist. One of Pitt River's grandsons, George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers (1890-1966) inherited his grandfather's estate including title to some of the museum's collection. He was a strong supporter of the eugenics movement and a vocal Nazi-sympathizer during the Second World War, which led to his incarceration in the Tower of London from 1940-1942. It was there he met Stella Lonsdale, who was imprisoned on suspicion of being a Nazi spy. She eventually became his third wife and inherited his estate when he passed away in 1966.