Charon, the ferryman, transported the deceased across the river separating the world of the living from that of the dead. The reality of this journey to the ancient Greeks is reflected in the many representations of Charon and his charges. Here he awaits a woman and a little boy who is undoubtedly the deceased. The child is elevated on a rock and motions to his mother with one hand while holding his go-cart with the other.
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Title:Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)
Artist:Attributed to the Painter of Munich 2335
Period:Classical
Date:ca. 430 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; white-ground
Dimensions:H. 12 1/2 in. (31.8 cm); diameter 4 in. (10.2 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1909
Object Number:09.221.44
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1910. "Department of Classical Art: The Accessions of 1909. III. Vases and Terracottas." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 5(6): pp. 142, 145, fig. 3.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1917. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 130, fig. 83, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 163, fig. 112, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 163, fig. 112, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1933. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 5th ed. pp. 46–47, fig. 57, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1941. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 6th ed. pp. 46–47, fig. 57, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 100, 243, pl. 83d, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Beazley, John D. 1963[1942]. Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, Vols. 1 and 2, 2nd ed. p. 1168, no. 128, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Beck, Frederick A. G. 1975. Album of Greek Education: The Greeks at School and at Play. p. 47, fig. 277, Sydney: Cheiron Press.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1986. Vol. 3: Atherion-Eros. "Charon I," p. 213, no. 13, pl. 169, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Boardman, John. 1989. Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Classical Period, a Handbook. fig. 268, London: Thames and Hudson.
Tiverios, Michalis A. 1989. Perikleia Panathenaia: A Krater of the Painter of Munich 2335. pp. 94–5, Thessalonikē: Andromeda Oxford Limited.
Neils, Jenifer, John H. Oakley, and Katherine Hart. 2003. Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past no. 115, pp. 162, 174, 300–1, New Haven: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
Lezzi-Hafter, Adrienne. 2008. "Clay, Gold and Craft: Special Techniques in Three Vases by the Eretria Painter and the Apotheosis in Xenophantos." Papers on Special Techniques in Athenian Vases: proceedings of a symposium held in connection with the exhibition 'The colors of clay: special techniques in Athenian vases', at the Getty Villa, June 15-17, Kenneth Lapatin, ed. p. 185 n. 10, Los Angeles, C.A.: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Oakley, John H., Olga Palagia, and H. Alan Shapiro. 2009. "Children in Athenian Funerary Art During the Peloponnesian War." Art in Athens During the Peloponnesian War, Olga Palagia, ed. pp. 212, 216, 234, fig. 57, n. 16, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Childs, William A.P. 2018. Greek Art & Aesthetics in the Fourth Century B.C.. p. 140, fig. 194, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Zanker, Paul. 2022. Afterlives : Ancient Greek Funerary Monuments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 52, fig. 13, New York: Scala Publishers.
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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.
