Red-Figure Squat Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Eros and Woman (c. 400–380 BCE): Art, History and Details

Red-Figure Squat Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Eros and Woman (c. 400–380 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This miniature oil vessel dates to the early fourth century BC, a time when red-figure vase painters become more liberal in the use of added white and other colors. Here, both Eros and the woman he pursues have white skin, with blue adorning her garment and his wings, and light brown coloring the added clay used for their jewelry, headbands, and the fronts of his wings. A large red-figure palmette, flanked by tendrils and half-palmettes, occupies the back of the vase.

Object facts

• Title: Red-Figure Squat Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Eros and Woman
• Date: c. 400–380 BCE
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 11.7 cm (4 5/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1926.553

A detail from the museum

Added clay pellets help to define the figures’ jewelry and other elements, including the ornament above.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade 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.
• 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.