Athenian cemeteries housed a variety of monuments and offerings to the dead. Examples include the marble tombstones and terracotta vessels, like this object. This vase, called a lekythos, held oil. From the middle until the end of the fifth century BC, they were usually decorated in a distinctive technique known as white ground, so called after the light slip coating on the body and shoulder of the vase. Atop this, figures were usually drawn in outline and then painted in rich colors, many of which have since faded. Since most of these bottles were made for burial with the dead or to be left at their graves, the scenes on their surfaces typically represent tombs, visitors to tombs, and farewell scenes.
A brown-haired, bearded man, his upper body covered with a blue garment, sits before a tomb. Behind him, a solemn youth is wrapped in a dark-orange himation, or mantle, and leans on a walking stick as he proffers a crested helmet to the man with his right hand. A scabbard is suspended from his left hand. Standing on the far side is the partially preserved figure of a red-haired woman wearing a chiton, or floor-length garment, that is orange-brown from her bust down with remains of vertical blue lines on the skirt. She holds a basket on her left shoulder.
Date
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46.4 × 13.4 cm (18 1/4 × 5 1/4 in.); Diam.: 13.4 cm (5 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Martin A. Ryerson through the Antiquarian Society
Reference Number
1907.18
IIIF Manifest
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Wilhelm Fröhner, Collection van Branteghem: Vases peints et terre cuites antiques (Paris 1892) no. 197, pl. 44.
Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, no. 1 (1907), pp. 12-13.
Daniel Catton Rich, “Martin A. Ryerson’s Gifts to the Classical Department,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, vol. 27, no. 1 (January 1933), pp. 17-18.
Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, XXVII, no. 1 (1933), pp. 18-19, fig. 3.
The Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report (1933), p. 32.
Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, vol. XXVIII, no. 3 (1934), p. 32 (ill.).
John D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase Painters, Volume II (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 1381, no. 114.
John D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase Painters, Volume I (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 827, no. 100 (Reed Painter).
Donna Carol Kurtz, Athenian Lekythoi (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 58-69, 71, pl. 51, no. 1, pp. 223-224 (ill.).
Karen Manchester, Recasting the Past: Collecting and Presenting Antiquities at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 54.
Karen B. Alexander, “From Plaster to Stone: Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” in Karen Manchester, Recasting the Past: Collecting and Presenting Antiquities at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 22-23, 38, fig. 7.
Art Institute of Chicago, Ancient Art Galleries, Gallery 155, April 20, 1994 - February 6, 2012.
Art Institute of Chicago, When the Greeks Ruled: Egypt After Alexander the Great, October 31, 2013 - July 27, 2014.
Art Institute of Chicago, Of Gods and Glamour: The Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art, Gallery 151, November 11, 2012 - October 23, 2013, July 29, 2014-present.
Alphonse van Branteghem, Brussels; sold, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 30-June 1, 1892, lot 197, to Martin A. Ryerson (1856-1932), Chicago; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1907.
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