Detail of a White-Ground Lekythos Attributed to the Achilles Painter in the British Museum, May 2014

Object type: lekythos

Museum number: 1893,0917.1


Description

Pottery: White-ground lekythos.


Offerings at tomb. The stele is a slender shaft reaching to the upper border, surmounted by a necking and a diminutive pediment, and resting on one tall plinth on which is laid a taenia drawn in brown outline, with a hatched pattern. On the left is a youth in a chlamys with petasos at his back, holding a spear upright in his right. On the right is a youth in an himation, holding in front of him a purse (?) hanging from a string in his right hand. On left of the upper part of the stele is a soul, eidolon (εΐδωλον), represented as a minute winged figure drawn in sketchy brown silhouette; it flies towards the stele, pointing to it with left arm extended and right hand raised to its head with a gesture of sorrow.

Brown outline; hair in black stippling on brown; chlamys vermilion; himation purple; both have folds in black; in the purple the sketch-marks show; the taeniae round the stele are alternately black and vermilion. Eye in profile. Above, maeander broken by dotted cross squares; on the shoulder, three palmettes (alternate petals red) and egg pattern, all black on white.



Producer name: Attributed to: The Achilles Painter biography


Culture/period: Attic


Date: 460BC-430BC (circa)


Production place: Made in: Attica;
(Europe,Greece,Attica (Greece))


Findspot: Excavated/Findspot: Eretria;
(Europe,Greece,Central Greece and Euboea,Euboea (island),Eretria)


Materials: pottery

Ware
White ground


Dimensions: Height: 33.02 centimetres


Curator's comments: BM Cat. Vases

White Athenian Vases, pl. 5.



Bibliography: Vase D54 bibliographic details


Subjects: sacrifice; tomb/mausoleum


Acquisition name: Purchased from: E Triantophyllos


Acquisition date: 1893


Department: Greek & Roman Antiquities


Registration number: 1893,0917.1


Text from: www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=461123