This lekythos is impressive for the well-preserved color and quantity of detail. The setting is probably a family burial plot. Closest to the viewer are two dark blocks, the left one partly overlapping the right. Attached to the right block are a pair of jumping weights, an aryballos (oil flask), and a wreath. The two stelai (grave markers) should certainly be understood as standing on top of the blocks. Farthest from the viewer are two forms that represent one or two burial mounds. The figures at this funerary precinct are adding to the large number of fillets (bands) and wreaths.
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This artwork is meant to be viewed from right to left. Scroll left to view more.
Woman and youth on either side of two grave stelai bound with fillets. View #2, showing youth and stelai
Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)
Artist:Attributed to the Vouni Painter
Period:Classical
Date:ca. 460–450 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; white-ground
Dimensions:Overall: 16 11/16 x 5 7/16in. (42.4 x 13.8cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Purchase, Anonymous Gift, 1935
Accession Number:35.11.5
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1946. Attic Red-Figured Vases: A Survey. p. 114, fig. 83, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 88, 229, pl. 69a, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1958[1946]. Attic Red-Figured Vases: A Survey, Revised Edition, 2nd edn. p. 114, fig. 83, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Beazley, John D. 1963[1942]. Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, Vols. 1 and 2, 2nd ed. p. 744, no. 1, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Beazley, John D. 1971. Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters [2nd edition]. p. 413, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Langridge-Noti, Elizabeth. 2003. "Mourning at the Tomb: A Re-evaluation of the Sphinx Monument on Attic Black-figured Pottery." Archäologischer Anzeiger, 1: pp. 149, 151.
Oakley, John H., Lesley A. Beaumont, H. Alan Shapiro, and Jenifer Neils. 2003. "Death and the Child." Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past, Jenifer Neils, John H. Oakley, and Katherine Hart, eds. p. 168, fig. 9, New Haven: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
Oakley, John H. 2004. Picturing Death in Classical Athens: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi. p. 123, pls. VII a–b, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cohen, Beth. 2006. The Colors of Clay: Special Techniques in Athenian Vases no. 62, pp. 222–23, Malibu: J. Paul Getty Trust.
Brøns, Cecilie. 2017. Gods and Garments : Textiles in Greek Sanctuaries in the 7th to the 1st Centuries B.C.. pp. 197–98, fig. 47, Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Oakley, John H. 2020. A Guide to Scenes of Daily Life on Athenian Vases. pp. 221, 224, fig. 10.9a–b, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Zanker, Paul. 2022. Afterlives : Ancient Greek Funerary Monuments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 49–52, fig. 12, 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. 315–16, 324, figs. 14.5, 14.6, 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.
