White-Ground Lekythos Depicting a Scene at a Tomb

AAT Object Form/Functionlekythoi

AAT Object TechniqueWhite-ground

CultureGreek, Attic

PeriodClassical

Dateca. 430 BCE

MediumTerracotta

Credit LineCarlos Collection of Ancient Art

Dimensions10 1/4 x 3 1/8 in. (26 x 7.9 cm)

Object number1999.011.001

Label TextThis white-ground lekythos (a pitcher for carrying oil or perfume) depicts a woman visiting the tomb of her baby son, shown sitting on top of a stepped grave monument. The heavily draped woman is accompanied by a slave girl, characterized as such by her distinctive cropped hairstyle and unidealized facial features. She approaches from the other side carrying offerings for the tomb: she balances a basket of sashes on her head and holds an alabastron (perfume vase) in her hand.

Such graveside scenes are typical of white-ground lekythoi, which were themselves intended as grave goods and used in funerary ritual. The term 'white-ground' refers to the style of decoration, whereby the body of the vase was covered with a slip that turned white during firing. Figures were then drawn in outline and completed with added colours such as red, blue, yellow and purple. These colors tend to fade over time due to the fragility of the paint, eventually prompting the technique to be limited exclusively to the decoration of funerary lekythoi.

Exhibition HistoryArt, Myth, and Culture: Greek Vases in Southern Collections, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1981
Pandora's Box: Women in Classical Greece, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland, 1995-1996
MCCM Permanent Collection Galleries, 2000 - June 2003
Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past (travelling show), Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 23 - December 14, 2003; Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 21 - August 1, 2004; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, September 14 - December 5, 2004
MCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation, January 2005 - April 28, 2014
MCCM Permanent Collection Reinstallation, July 2014 - Present
Confronting Slavery in the Classical World, Michael C. Carlos Museum (virtual exhibition), September 29, 2021 - December 19, 2021
Published ReferencesJohn D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase Painters, 2nd Edition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 1230, number 44.
H.A. Shapiro, Art, Myth, and Culture: Greek Vases from Southern Collections (New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of Art in conjunction with Tulane University, 1981), 112-13, number 44.
Thomas H. Carpenter, et al., Beazley Addenda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 351.
Sotheby's New York, Antiquities and Islamic Art (December 14, 1993), lot 28.
Ellen D. Reeder, Pandora: Women in Classical Greece (Baltimore: Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1995), 223-24, number 54.
Margaret C. Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), figure 139.
MCCM Newsletter, March - May 2000.
Jenifer Neils and John H. Oakley, et al. Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 172, 301-02, cat. 116.
Jasper Gaunt, "New Galleries of Greek & Roman Art at Emory University: The Michael C. Carlos Museum," Minerva 16 (2005): 13-17.
Marie-Claire Crelier, Kinder in Athen im gesellschaftlichen Wandel des 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.: eine archaologische Annaherung (Remshalden: Greiner, 2008), 139-41.
Viktoria Raeuchle, Die Mutter Athens und ihre Kinder: Verhaltens- und Gefuhlsideale in klassischer Zeit (Berlin: Reimer, 2017), 95, Abb. 22, number V34.

ProvenanceEx coll. William G. Helis, Jr. (1918-1988), New Orleans, Lousiana, prior to 1963. With Sotheby's New York, December 14, 1993, lot 28. Ex coll. Sir Claude Hankes-Drielsma [Stanford Place Collection], Great Britain, by 1995. Purchased by MCCM from Michael Ward [Ward & Company, Works of Art, Inc.], New York, New York.

Status

On view

Collections

Greek and Roman Art

Technical NotesReflective Transformation Imaging reveals faint sketch lines delineating the slave girl’s body, suggesting that the surface paint is faded, lost, or unfinished.