A musician riding a dolphin, on a Red-figure stamnos (360–340 BC) from Etruria. In this case the musician is an aulete rather than a kitharode, as he is playing the flute (aulos) rather than a kithara.Arion riding a Dolphin, by Albrecht Dürer (c. 1514)Arion on a Sea Horse, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1855)
^The dolphin's love of music and of humans was proverbial among Greeks (Euripides, Electra 435f; for the folktale motif, see Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folk Literature (Bloomington IN) 1955-58) s.v. B300-B349, and B473, B767.