Red-Figure Amphora with Musical Scene

One of the prominent painters of classical Athens, the Niobid Painter (named after his most famous vase) is admired for his quiet and balanced compositions. Here, in the women's quarters of a house, three elaborately dressed women prepare for a music session. A seated woman relaxes while fingering a "barbiton" (a stringed instrument). Above her head hangs a lyre. She faces a woman holding double flutes, and a third woman lifts the lid of a box. The scene evokes the leisured and relatively educated world of affluent Athenian women. On the back, women dressed in the attire of maenads, the female followers of Dionysus, hold pine branches and a torch; these may be the same women, now preparing for their ritual roles in Dionysus' cult.