The scene, rendered with extraordinary delicacy, shows women at home engaged in everyday pursuits: one folds a garment, another bends over to tie her sandal, a third walks with a casket and a glass alabastron (vase for perfumed oil), yet another plays with a pet quail. The names given to each of the figures are those of Nereids, daughters of the sea god Nereus, who are therefore usually associated with the deep. As so often, it is impossible to know whether the ladies are mortals with mythological names or Nereids shown in a domestic Athenian setting. The color and condition of the pyxis indicate that it was in a fire. The lid is so damaged that its decoration can no longer be discerned.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta pyxis (box)
Artist:Attributed to the Painter of London D 14
Period:Classical
Date:ca. 420–410 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; white-ground
Dimensions:total H. 4 13/16 in. (12.29 cm.); diameter of cover 4 9/16 in. (11.6 cm.)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1940
Accession Number:40.11.2a, b
Inscription: The names of the Nereids are inscribed.
Said to be from Greece
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1940. "Four Notable Acquisitions of the Metropolitan Museum of Art." American Journal of Archaeology, 44 (4): pp. 428–31, figs. 1–3.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1940. "An Athenian Toilet Box." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 35(8): pp. 157–59, figs. 1–2.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1946. Attic Red-Figured Vases: A Survey. p. 136, fig. 104, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 88, 102, 243, pl. 83g, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1958[1946]. Attic Red-Figured Vases: A Survey, Revised Edition, 2nd edn. p. 136, fig. 104, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Beazley, John D. 1963[1942]. Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, Vols. 1 and 2, 2nd ed. p. 1213, no. 1 top, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Auth, Susan H. 1976. Ancient glass at the Newark Museum from the Eugene Schaefer Collection of antiquities. p. 21 n. 30, Newark: Newark Museum.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1981. Vol. 1: Aara-Aphlad. "Aktaie I," p. 453, no. 1, pl. 346, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Wehgartner, Irma. 1983. Attisch Weissgrundige Keramik: Maltechniken, Werkstätten, Formen, Verwendung. no. 23, p. 144, 149, pl. 46,1, Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1986. Vol. 3: Atherion-Eros. "Beroie," p. 98, no. 1, pl. 74, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1988. Vol. 4: Eros-Herakles. "Galene I," pp. 151–52, no. 5, pl. 74; "Glauke I," p. 270, no. 6, pl. 160, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1992. Vol. 6: Kentauroi-Oiax. "Kymodoke," p. 163, no. 1; "Mousa, Mousai," p. 661, no. 16; "Nereides," p. 789, no. 12, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
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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.
