Marble vase with high foot and lug handles

Technical analysis: Ultraviolet-induced visible light luminescence examination


This marble jar consists of a hemispherical body, a cylindrical tapering neck with a thickened rim at the exterior rim, and a high pedestalled foot that tapers upward. The four, evenly spaced, vertical lugs located at the widest part of the body are pierced for its suspension. It is complete except for a large part of the rim, which has been filled in. There is an incised line around the exterior of the rim and around the rim-like bottom of the hollowed foot. A thick calcareous encrustation covers the majority of the exterior surface except at the top of the shoulder, which may have been selectively cleaned. What appear to be scattered root marks cover much of the lower surface of the jar.


The round bodied jar with four equidistant, vertical pierced lugs on the shoulder, a tall tapering collared neck and pedestal foot reminded modern Cycladic islanders of the glass oil lamp, or ‘kandila’, that they suspended to illuminate their churches and chapels, hence their common modern designation. Pat Getz-Gentle observes that examples with a tall conical collar and foot, each with a marked taper, a broad hemispherical body with long slender lugs that follow the contour of the wall, rising from it fluidly near the flat shoulder and merging with it again on the underside to give the effect of the broadening belly into an elipsoidal shape are likely to be works of the same artist responsible for most of the extant examples and whom she calls Kandila sculptor A. (1)


Sandy MacGillivray, J-F de Lapérouse


(1) See Getz-Gentle, Pat. 1996. Stone Vessels of the Cyclades in the Early Bronze Age. pp. 26-35, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. This vessel is very similar to Getz-Preziosi, Pat. 1987. Early Cycladic Art in North American Collections. no. 98, Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.