The Minotaur: Ultra-Soft Premium Cotton T-Shirt
The Minotaur. This design is based on a 2,500-year-old wine-drinking cup, which today is housed in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. The surrounding inscription reads ὁ παῖς καλός (”The boy is handsome/beautiful”).
This Minotaur was at the bottom of a wine bowl. As the drink went down, the black-figure scene gradually emerged, and the person drinking from the bowl would see the Minotaur.
The piece is an Attic kylix - a two-handled ancient Greek drinking cup - that combines black-figure and red-figure techniques, and it's currently in the collection of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid.
Inside the tondo, the Minotaur is depicted alone in a pose resembling a running stride, with one knee close to the ground. Theseus isn't in the scene. There's no sword. There's no thread of Ariadne either... In both hands, he holds round objects that look like stones. The vase painter made the Minotaur the focal point here.
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur is a Cretan creature - born to Pasiphae and the bull Poseidon sent to be sacrificed to Minos - who was locked inside the Labyrinth built by Daedalus. In most accounts, he's killed by Theseus.
The letters placed around the figure form a kalos inscription. On ancient Greek vases, kalos inscriptions were short phrases praising beauty. The phrase 'ho pais kalos' here means 'the young man is beautiful'.