Vessel with Leda and the Swan

With elaborate scenes on both sides, this loutrophoros or ritual vase is characteristic of the work of vase painters in southern Italy around 330 B.C. The multilevel composition on one side shows successive moments in one of the god Zeus's many seductions of a mortal woman. At the bottom, Zeus in the form of a swan approaches Leda. Above, Zeus meets with Aphrodite, the goddess of love, presumably enlisting her help for the seduction. Both episodes are surrounded by personifications. The vase's other side displays a woman in a naiskos, a small open building, surrounded by attendants. Beginning in the 600s B.C., Greeks colonized parts of southern Italy and Sicily. From about 450 B.C., these colonists began producing their own fine, decorated pottery, which eclipsed the imported Athenian wares by the 300s B.C. This pottery, known as South Italian, grew directly out of Athenian shapes, style, and subject matter. The colonists quickly developed their own variations, inventing new shapes, finding their own styles, and depicting subjects not otherwise found in Greek art. Scholars divide South Italian pottery into regional schools of production, the largest of which is Apulian.