Black-Figure White-Ground Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Horseman, Horse between Warriors, Dog (c. 500 BCE): Art, History and Details

Black-Figure White-Ground Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Horseman, Horse between Warriors, Dog (c. 500 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Edinburgh Painter (Greek, Attic, active c. 505–485 BCE).

The work and its context

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

Two armed warriors, each wearing a crested helmet and holding a spear and shield, flank a mounted horseman, who leads another horse. The warrior at right reaches up with one hand to the head of the second horse, raising the question of how he still holds his spear. Below, a dog twists to scratch itself and look back, its right hind foot apparently resting on one of the warrior’s.

Object facts

• Title: Black-Figure White-Ground Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Horseman, Horse between Warriors, Dog
• Date: c. 500 BCE
• Creator attribution: Edinburgh Painter (Greek, Attic, active c. 505–485 BCE)
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 32.4 cm (12 3/4 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1929.135

A detail from the museum

The Edinburgh Painter was the first artist to paint black-figure decoration on a white ground.

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.
• Boulter, C. G., Jenifer Neils, and Gisela Walberg. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971.

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.