This vase exemplifies Attic white-ground funerary lekythoi at their finest. Funerary representations of the sixth century B.C. depicted the deceased surrounded by mourners. By the middle of the fifth century, the deceased was shown either as living or not at all. The figure at the left is a mourner; the deceased is identifiable by the diminutive soul fluttering above his head.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)
Artist:Attributed to the Achilles Painter
Period:Classical
Date:ca. 440 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; white-ground
Dimensions:H. 14 3/4 in. (37.39 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Gift of Norbert Schimmel Trust, 1989
Accession Number:1989.281.72
By 1974, collection of Norbert Schimmel, New York; acquired in 1989, gift of the Norbert Schimmel Trust.
Muscarella, Oscar White. 1974. Ancient Art: The Norbert Schimmel Collection no. 63, Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
Vermeule, Emily T. 1979. Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry. pp. 9–10. 213 n. 15, fig. 5, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1990. "One Hundred Twentieth Annual Report of the Trustees for the Fiscal Year July 1, 1989 through June 30, 1990." Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 120: p. 26.
Milleker, Elizabeth J. 1992. "Ancient Art: Gifts from The Norbert Schimmel Collection: Greek and Roman." Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 49(4): p. 48.
Oakley, John H. 1997. The Achilles Painter. no. 234, pp. 67–69, 146, pl. 123a, b, Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 156, pp. 139, 435, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Sparkes, Brian. 2011. Greek Art, 2nd ed. pp. x, 99, 101, 106, 114, fig. 31, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Galitz, Kathryn. 2016. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Masterpiece Paintings. no. 20, p. 26, New York: Skira.
Brulé, Pierre. 2017. "Les funérailles : Les rites funéraires dans le monde grec." Rituels Grecs : Une Expérience Sensible, Evelyne Ugaglia and Adeline Grand-Clément, eds. p. 136, fig. 30, Toulouse: Musée Saint-Raymond, Musée des Antiques de Toulouse.
Zanker, Paul. 2022. Afterlives : Ancient Greek Funerary Monuments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 49–50, fig. 11, New York: Scala Publishers.
Williams, Dyfri, Kenneth Lapatin, Nicholaus Dietrich, Judith M. Barringer, Francois Lissarrague, and Edinburgh University Press. 2022. Images at the Crossroads : Media and Meaning in Greek Art, Judith M. Barringer and Francois Lissarrague, eds. pp. 319, 323, fig. 14.13, Edinburgh.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
