On the shoulder, women dancing between musicians playing flute and lyre On the body, wedding procession
This is the earliest and most complete known representation of an Attic wedding. The bridal couple with the best man behind them sit in a cart drawn by two donkeys. A mule cart with four guests follows. Other members of the procession are on foot. The woman in the lead holds two torches, indicating that the scene takes place at night. The procession heads toward the bridegroom's house where a woman, probably the mother of the groom, awaits. The architecture of the house is carefully indicated; the white columns of the porch may be painted wood.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)
Artist:Attributed to the Amasis Painter
Period:Archaic
Date:ca. 550–530 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; black-figure
Dimensions:H. 6 7/8 in. (17.5 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Purchase, Walter C. Baker Gift, 1956
Accession Number:56.11.1
[Until 1956, with Nicolas Koutoulakis, Paris]; acquired in 1956, purchased from N. Koutoulakis.
Redmond, Roland L. and Dudley T. Easby Jr. 1956. "Report of the Trustees for the Fiscal Year 1955–1956." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 15(2): p. 54.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1970. "The Department of Greek and Roman Art: Triumphs and Tribulations." Metropolitan Museum Journal, 3: pp. 84, 86–87, fig. 29.
Beazley, John D. 1971. Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters [2nd edition]. p. 66, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1972. Greek Vase Painting: An Introduction. no. 11, pp. 4, 22–23, 69, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1972. "Greek Vase Painting." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 31(1): no. 8, pp. 4, 22–23, 67.
von Bothmer, Dietrich and Alan L. Boegehold. 1985. The Amasis Painter and His World: Vase-Painting in Sixth-Century B.C. Athens. no. 47, pp. 40, 182–84, 201, pl. 4, Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 1985. The Amasis Painter and His World: Vase-Painting in Sixth-Century B.C. Athens. no. 47, pp. 8, 15, fig. 4, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Maas, Martha and Jane McIntosh Snyder. 1989. Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece. pp. 38, 51, fig. 15b, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Carratelli, Giovanni Pugliese and Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli. 1994. Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica, Classica e Orientale: Atlante delle Forme Ceramiche, Suppl. 2, Vol. 1. p. 183, fig. 219, Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
Isler, Hans Peter. 1994. "Der Töpfer Amasis und der Amasis-Maler. Bemerkungen zur Chronologie und zur Person." Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, 109: p. 113.
Hornblower, Simon and Antony Spawforth. 1998. The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. p. 422, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boegehold, Alan L. 1999. When a Gesture Was Expected. p. 18, fig. 6, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cohen, Beth. 2000. Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art pp. 50–1, Leiden: Brill.
Neils, Jenifer, John H. Oakley, and Katherine Hart. 2003. Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past p. 128, fig. 19, New Haven: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
Foley, Helene, Lesley A. Beaumont, and H. Alan Shapiro. 2003. "Mothers and Daughters." Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past, Jenifer Neils, John H. Oakley, and Katherine Hart, eds. p. 128, fig. 19, New Haven: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College.
Oakley, John H. 2004. Picturing Death in Classical Athens: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi. p. 5, fig. 1b, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bundrick, Sheramy. 2005. Music and Image in Fifth-century Athens. figs. 104–5, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 72, pp. 76, 420, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Calder, Louise. 2011. Cruelty and Sentimentality: Greek Attitudes to Animals, 600-300 BC. no. 115, pp. 51, 178, Oxford: Archaeopress.
Moore, Mary B. 2013. "Herakles Takes Aim: A Rare Attic Black-Figured Neck-Amphora Attributed to the Princeton Painter." Metropolitan Museum Journal, 48: p. 56 n. 75.
Bodiou, Lydie. 2017. "Le Mariage : Le flamboiement des sens." Rituels Grecs : Une Expérience Sensible, Evelyne Ugaglia and Adeline Grand-Clément, eds. pp. 20–21, 34–35, fig. 6, Toulouse: Musée Saint-Raymond, Musée des Antiques de Toulouse.
Oakley, John H. 2020. A Guide to Scenes of Daily Life on Athenian Vases. p. 202, fig. 9.13a–b, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2020. ART = Discovering Infinite Connections in Art History. pp. 069, 270, New York: Phaidon Press.
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. p. 174, Edinburgh.
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![Greek Vase Painting [adapted from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 31, no. 1 (Fall, 1972)]](/-/media/images/art/metpublication/cover/1987/greek_vase_painting.jpg)
