White-Ground Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Mourners at Tomb (c. 400s BCE, with modern painting): Art, History and Details

White-Ground Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Mourners at Tomb (c. 400s BCE, with modern painting) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In its basic shape and decorative scheme—three figures before a stepped tomb marker—this lekythos resembles hundreds of funerary vessels made in Athens during the fifth century (400s) BC. But unusual features of the painted decoration, including the multicolored palmettes on the shoulder, and the shoes worn by the youth, suggest a modern intervention. Zinc found in analysis of the white ground is also likely modern, although the vessel itself may be ancient.

Object facts

• Title: White-Ground Lekythos (Oil Vessel): Mourners at Tomb
• Date: c. 400s BCE, with modern painting
• Culture: Greek, Attic
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: ceramic
• Dimensions: Overall: 39.4 cm (15 1/2 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1927.434

A detail from the museum

Both stylistic and technical studies suggest that this vase is not wholly ancient.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• R. H. "Orestes Sarcophagus and Greek Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 15, no. 4 (1928).

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.