Vatican Museums

Equipped with a handle with a palmette attachment flanked by coiled serpents. Oinochoai with an oblique lip, known as Schnabelkannen, constitute one of the most peculiar items to emerge from the bronze workshops of Vulci, which produced vessels for symposia. This form of vessel had a vast circulation which included various cultural areas of the Italian peninsula. Of particular interest is its propagation towards the northern regions and Alpine area; it then spread widely throughout central Europe, where it was adopted in the Celtic cultural areas, with local adaptations and reworkings. The diffusion of these jugs, which form the distinctive element of the symposium service between the last decades of the sixth and the fifth centuries B.C. was not merely a commercial phenomenon, but also implies a cultural fascination with the Etruscans, who took typically Mediterranean elements, linked to the ritualised consumption of wine, into the heart of Europe.