Lekythos (Oil Jar) (about 400 BCE): Artwork and History

Lekythos (Oil Jar) (about 400 BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Greek; possibly Campania, Italy.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

During the course of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., black vessels (commonly called black-glaze vessels) were made with increasing frequency in both Greece and South Italy. Many of them replicate the shape of metal vessels. Others have detailing that is molded or incised. While the quality of these vessels varies greatly, all would have been less expensive than vessels decorated in other contemporary techniques, for example, in red-figure.

Object facts

• Title: Lekythos (Oil Jar)
• Date: about 400 BCE
• Artist attribution: Greek; possibly Campania, Italy
• Place of origin: Ancient Greece
• Medium: terracotta, black-glaze
• Dimensions: 24.1 × 11.1 × 11.1 cm (9 1/2 × 4 3/8 × 4 3/8 in.)
• Type: Vessel
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1889.257

Collection credit

Museum Purchase Fund

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.