Owl skyphoi – those rough and ready cups produced in great quantities in 5th century Athens and imitated widely in Southern Italy – are always pretty great.
Normally Athena’s companion animal, the owl, is shown between two olive springs, turning to peer at the viewer. That format is fun, and a easily recognizable visual synecdoche for the goddess and her roost on the Athenian Akropolis.
But in this example in the Louvre, the owl is beefed up, armed to the teeth (beak?), and anthropomorphized in a most charming manner. His (her?) dappled plumage doubled as armour, he grasps a spear (the arm adorably rendered as human with bulging bicep) and shield, and his head transformed into a helmet and topped by a transverse crest.
The visual reference is most likely Athena Promachos herself, the goddess on war footing – her diminutive familiar humorously and ferociously kitted out to match.
