Baltimore, Hopkins BMA 41.134
White-Ground Lekythos
440-420 B.C.
41.134. (P.4015 on underside of foot.) Baltimore Museum of Art, gift
of Blanche Adler, purchased in 1926 from Joseph Brummer. Ht, 24.6 cm; diam
mouth, 4.6 cm; diam foot, 4.8 cm. Handle is probably not original.
Color of figure scene and ornament fired red. Maiden in right profile
holds object (now missing) in both hands. The color of her garment has faded,
leaving only her nude body. She stands before a grave stele wrapped with taenia
and surmounting stepped base. On other side of stele is youth, standing
frontally, head in left profile. He wears a himation, which is draped over his
body, exposing his right shoulder and breast.
Upper surface of lip reserved. On neck is tongue pattern between
single lines. On shoulder is scheme of three five-petal palmettes entwined in
volutes. Central palmette is inverted, other two are turned toward handle. Above
picture is meander in groups of three, alternately leftward and rightward,
separated by saltire squares. Two lines above and beneath. Single line under
picture.
The white-ground technique developed in Athens at the end of the
sixth century B.C. The artist outlined his figures upon a field of white slip
before firing the vase. After the vessel was removed from the kiln, matte colors
were applied, but because this paint was not baked onto the vase, the colors
have often faded or vanished.
1
From its early years, the technique was applied to lekythoi, but it
was only in the second quarter of the fifth century that white-ground lekythoi
regularly depicted funerary subjects and became primarily associated with the
grave.
2 The vessels were used to hold libations of olive oil and were placed as
offerings at the base of the grave stele or were buried with the deceased.
3
In the middle of the fifth century the Achilles Painter dispensed
with the relief line heretofore used for outlining the figures and introduced
the softer matte paint that would become almost canonical on later lekythoi like
ours. Our vase is surely the product of the Bird Group, a large workshop that
was active in the 430's and 420's under the leadership of the Bird Painter,
4 and in which the Painter of Munich 2335 may also have worked. The
palmette ornament on the neck of our lekythos is characteristic of vases by this
latter artist, as is the emotional note conveyed by the sharply downturned head
of the maiden.
5 We might also compare examples by the Bird Painter
6 and by another colleague, the Carlsberg Painter.
7
