A male figure, facing left, sits on a richly decorated throne with lion-paw feet and a back adorned with a lotus flower. The man holds a kantharos in his right hand and looks forward. In front of him are reduced-scale depictions of a horse and a dog. Due to the lack of architectural context, the relief gives an impression of being carved from wood: the individual stepped pictorial planes look like layers of a board.
The "Relief from Chrysafa" was found in 1877 south of Chrysafa in Laconia, southern Greece. It is almost undamaged, with only the border of the left edge missing. The lower part of the relief (below the horizontal baseline) is unfinished and was likely intended to be embedded into the ground or a foundation. The reverse side also remained unfinished. This relief is one of ten known in a series that share common decorative and compositional elements. All are made of local Laconian stone, found in Laconia, and were likely created by local artists working, possibly, in a local style. Stylistically, they are dated from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. The most famous among them, which gave its name to the entire group, is the so-called "Sabourov Relief," sold by the Russian diplomat and collector P.A. Sabourov to the Berlin Museum in 1880.
Interpretations of these monuments can be summarized in three theses: 1) they depict heroized deceased individuals or ancestors; 2) they are essentially votive reliefs to the gods of the Underworld, Hades and Persephone (although Dionysus was also considered a possible alternative, largely due to the enlarged kantharos); or 3) the reliefs are offerings to revered heroes, already established in Greek mythology, but particularly venerated in Sparta. Finds of votive deposits with similar motifs on decorated terracotta panels support the latter interpretation. One of these offerings in Amyclae may be connected to the sanctuary of Alexandra, described by Pausanias (Books 3, 19, 6).
In Sparta the heroine Alexandra was identified with Cassandra; she was venerated in a cult along with Agamemnon. However, what we know about the circumstances of the discovery of the reliefs from Chrysapha confirms the first interpretation of the Laconian reliefs as funerary monuments to deified heroes. The relief appears to have been found set up in a stone tumulus. Whether these piles of stones represent actual tombs remains unclear, despite further excavations at the site.

Pyotr Alexandrovich Saburov (1835-1918), a Russian diplomat and statesman, built his collection of ancient art primarily during his stay in Greece, where he served as Russia’s ambassador from 1870 to 1879. His collection of terracottas, particularly valued by the collector himself and renowned among his contemporaries, archaeologists, and connoisseurs of ancient art, was acquired by the Imperial Hermitage in 1884. The circumstances of this event are reconstructed from documents preserved in the Hermitage archive.
Saburov found himself in Greece at the time when the necropolis of ancient Tanagra was subjected to illegal excavations, and a flood of beautiful Hellenistic terracotta figurines entered the art market. This allowed him to acquire magnificent examples of the so-called Tanagras. Overall, Saburov’s collection is distinguished by its great diversity and contains remarkable examples of coroplastics from the Archaic and Roman periods. Invaluable information regarding the authenticity of the exhibits and the use of colorful pigments for their painting was provided by physical and chemical studies conducted in the Department of Scientific and Technical Expertise of the State Hermitage Museum (E.N. Khodza).