1965.16

Attic Black-Figure Lekythos

Purchased. Ht 30.4cm; diam. 12cm.

Reconstructed from fragments but without significant repainting.

The scene on the body has Dionysos seated between dancing satyrs and maenads. The god, who holds a drinking horn in his left hand, is seated to right but looks back left. He wears a chiton and himation and has a large wreath about his head. The satyrs and maenads dance in pairs amidst sprays of ivy. The added white has mostly worn away but was evidently used for the flesh of the maenads. Red was added for the beards of all males, for the headbands of both maenads and of the left satyr, and for dots decorating the garments. Added colour was also applied to the skirt of Dionysos’ chiton.

Above the scene is a zone of linked dots between pairs of lines that run all round the vase. On the shoulder are five palmettes with tongues above at the offset. The mouth is painted inside and out but the top of the lip is reserved. The lower wall and the foot are black; the underside is reserved. All the reserved surfaces including the underside have a thin wash of dilute glaze. There are lines of added red at the junction of neck and shoulder, at the top of the black on the lower wall, on the fillet between body and foot and on the upper corner of the foot. The underside is concave with a central indentation.

Earlier part of the fifth century BC. The painting shows the influence of the Edinburgh Painter (cf. C.H.E. Haspels, Attic Black-figured Lekythoi (Paris 1936) 215-21; J.D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters [Oxford 1956] 476-478).

On the significance of Dionysos being depicted on lekythoi, vases normally thought of as being a funerary shape, see W. van de Put, “Dionysos on Lekythoi: A Surprising Presence”, in E.M. Moormann and V.V. Stissi (eds), Shapes and Images. Studies on Attic Black Figure and Related Topics in Honour of Herman A.G. Brijder (BABesch Suppl. 14, Leuven 2009) 37-43.

Sotheby (London), Sale Cat., 28 June 1965, no. 95; J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 26. Beazley Archive Pottery Database 7660.