Black-Figure Loutrophoros-Amphora (Ritual Water Vessel): Prothesis (Laying out of Corpse), Mourners (c. 500 BCE): Art, History and Details

Black-Figure Loutrophoros-Amphora (Ritual Water Vessel): Prothesis (Laying out of Corpse), Mourners (c. 500 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The loutrophoros, a tall-necked water vessel, served two main purposes in ancient Athens. In life, it carried sacred spring water for ceremonial pre-marriage baths. After death, it marked the tomb of an unmarried person, as if to account for that not experienced in life. Often, as here, it has no bottom, permitting offerings to flow through to the grave. Both the precise shape of this vase—a two-handled loutrophoros-amphora rather than a three-handled loutrophoros-hydria—and its depiction of the deceased suggest the commemoration of a departed man (rather than a woman). The iconography is entirely funerary, with multiple mourning figures shown: four women on the neck; six women surrounding the corpse on its bier; and three men making farewell gestures. The inscriptions near some of the mourning women do not spell out real words but may represent their sorrowful cries.

Object facts

• Title: Black-Figure Loutrophoros-Amphora (Ritual Water Vessel): Prothesis (Laying out of Corpse), Mourners
• Date: c. 500 BCE
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 43.5 cm (17 1/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1927.145

A detail from the museum

Mourning figures wrap all the way around this vessel, even beneath the handles.

Collection credit

The Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• The Brummer Gallery Records. Cloisters (Museum), n.d.
• Howard, Rossiter, "Two Greek Vases." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 14, no. 6 (1927): 99-101.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.