1959.221: Lekythos (oil flask): Visit at Tomb

Identification and Creation

Object Number

1959.221

People

The Bird Painter

Title

Lekythos (oil flask): Visit at Tomb

Classification

Vessels

Work Type

vessel

Date

c. 450-400 BCE

Places

Creation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Europe, Attica

Period

Classical period, High

Culture

Greek

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/290987

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Terracotta

Technique

White ground

Dimensions

H. 21 cm (8 1/4 in.)

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

Standard Reference Number

Beazley Archive Database #216408

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Bequest of David M. Robinson

Accession Year

1959

Object Number

1959.221

Division

Asian and Mediterranean Art

Contact

am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu

Permissions

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Descriptions

Description

On the shoulder: three connected palmettes in reddish brown.

On the body: In the center, there is gravestone on a two-stepped platform with a simplified Doric top. There are two fillets tied around the middle and base.

A child with curly hair approaches from the left, holding up a mirror in her left hand; her clothing has worn off entirely.

On the right there is a woman with a crescent-shaped earring, draped in a dark red himation with her bare right arm raised towards the gravestone.

A band of meander pattern decorates the top of the body.

This vase has been assembled from fragments and extensively repaired. The mouth and handle may in fact have originally come from another similar vase.

Commentary

This vase is an example of a special type of Athenian vessel, the white-ground lekythos (oil flask). Unlike other Athenian pottery, which was regularly produced for export across the Mediterranean, and especially to Italy, white-ground lekythoi are only rarely found outside of Attica, the region surrounding Athens.

The white-ground decorative technique produces decoration which is much less stable than the red-figure or black-figure technique and is mostly used for vessels with funerary or ritual functions that do not demand heavy use. White ground lekythoi regularly feature decoration only on the front of the vessel, with the back left blank, and even decorative friezes extending only halfway around the vessel.

This type of vase was in common production from around 480 B.C.E. until towards the end of the fifth century. Its popularity in this period may be related to the absence of any private gravestones in Attica from around 490-80 to 430 B.C.E. Exactly why the Athenians stopped producing gravestones for half a century is not entirely clear, but the white-ground lekythos might be thought of as replicating some of the ritual and commemorative functions of a gravestone. A great many examples feature a representation of a grave monument.

These vases were designed to hold oil and seem to have been used in a number of different ways in funerary ritual: burned with the body in cremations, for pouring oil libations on the body or the grave site, and as offerings left at or in a burial. The great majority have been found in and around graves.

Accordingly, their painted decoration usually features scenes connected with funerary ritual or the mythology of the afterlife, and can give us some insight into ancient Athenian funerary practices and ideas about death. This scene shows a visit to the grave by the family of the deceased. Sometimes scenes of this kind will include a figure who seems to represent the dead individual, but it is often not possible to make identifications like this with any certainty. The presence of a child on this vase is an uncommon feature.

On white-ground lekythoi in general, see:
J. D. Beazley, Greek Vases: Lectures by J. D. Beazley, ed. D. C. Kurtz (Oxford, 1989), pp. 26-38 with pll. 17-24.
John H. Oakley, Picturing Death in Classical Athens: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi (Cambridge, 2004).

Publication History

• J. D. Beazley, Review of Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum: United States of America 4 = The Robinson Collection, Baltimore, Md., 1 by David Moore Robinson, Journal of Hellenic Studies (1934), 54, pp. 89-90, p.90
• David Moore Robinson, Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum U.S.A.: volume 3, The Robinson Collection, Baltimore, MD, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1938), p. 54, fig. 6, pl. 41a-c
• Fogg Art Museum, The David Moore Robinson Bequest of Classical Art and Antiquities, A Special Exhibition, exh. cat., Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, 1961), p. 17, no. 94
• J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, The Clarendon Press (Oxford, England, 1963), 1232.11
• Sarah Jane Rennie, "The Identification of Original Decoration on a Collection of Attic White Ground Lekythoi" (thesis (certificate in conservation), Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, 1994), Unpublished, pp. 1-24 passim
• Marie-Claire Crelier, Kinder in Athen im gesellschaftlichen Wandel des 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Eine archaologische Annaherung (Remshalden, 2008), fig. L33

Exhibition History

• The David Moore Robinson Bequest of Classical Art and Antiquities: A Special Exhibition, Fogg Art Museum, 05/01/1961 - 09/20/1961
• [teaching exhibition], University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque

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