Siren with a Kithara from a Grave Monument

Description This expressive figure of a mournful siren playing the kithara, a musical instrument like a lyre, originally crowned a funerary monument. Sirens were mythical creatures that were part-woman, part-bird, who, while best known as temptresses, also used their powers of song to praise men of great fame, and thus appear frequently on funerary monuments of the 4th century BCE.

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
10/04/1990	Loan Consideration	examined for loan
6/01/1995	Loan Consideration	examined for loan
1/18/1996	Treatment	cleaned
4/03/1998	Loan Consideration	examined for loan

Exhibitions

• The Odyssey and Ancient Art. Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. 1991-1992.
• Ulisse: Il mito e la memoria (Ulysses: The Myth and Memory). Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome. 1996.
• Ulysses, Myth and Memory. Haus der Kunst, Munich. 1999-2000.
• Things With Wings: Mythological Figures in Ancient Greek Art. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2005-2006.
• Things With Wings: Mythological Figures in Ancient Greek Art. Ward Museum, Salisbury. 2009.
• Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville; San Diego Museum Of Art, San Diego; Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (USA), New York. 2009-2011.
• Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife. Getty Villa, Pacific Palisades. 2018-2019.

Provenance Moise Emanuelides, Athens, 1923 [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Joseph Brummer, New York, 1923, by purchase [Brummer inv. no. 793]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1924, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters, 1924