Red-Figure Squat Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Birth of Erichthonios (c. 420–410 BCE): Art, History and Details

Red-Figure Squat Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Birth of Erichthonios (c. 420–410 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Meidias Painter (Greek, Attic, active c. 420–400 BCE).

The work and its context

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

The central group on this vase shows the seated earth goddess Ge (also known as Gaia) handing her baby, Erichthonios, to Athena. Conceived from the seed of Hephaistos, Erichthonios would go on to become a king of Athens, and the story of his birth became popular in Athenian art of the fifth century BC. Other representations include Hephaistos as well as Kekrops, the mythical first king of Athens, sometimes together with Zeus and other deities. But this one includes only female onlookers—likely the three daughters of Kekrops watching from above, with Aphrodite and several abstract personifications such as Peitho (Persuasion) and Eudaimonia (Happiness) standing and seated nearby.

Object facts

• Title: Red-Figure Squat Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Birth of Erichthonios
• Date: c. 420–410 BCE
• Creator attribution: Meidias Painter (Greek, Attic, active c. 420–400 BCE)
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic, with gilding
• Dimensions: Diameter: 18.6 cm (7 5/16 in.); Diameter of mouth: 8.7 cm (3 7/16 in.); Overall: 30.3 cm (11 15/16 in.); Diameter of foot: 14.5 cm (5 11/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1982.142

A detail from the museum

A lead rivet sits at the junction of handle and neck, probably an ancient repair.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive.
• Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (LIMC). Zürich: Artemis, 1981.
• Lee, Sherman E. "Year in Review for 1982." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 1 (1983): 3-55.

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.