1973.06

Attic Black-Figure Lekythos

Cyril Henry Leach Bequest, by courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Ht 19cm; diam. 7cm.

The vase is reconstructed from fragments but without restoration; the handle is missing. Much of the glaze has misfired red to the left of the scene.

The mouth is painted inside and out but the top of the lip is reserved. On the shoulder are lotus buds with bars above. On the upper wall is a dot band with the scene below it: Herakles and the Erymanthian boar. He leans forward with only a slight bend at the knees (compare 1973.09) and grasps the creature from above with his hands round its neck. It has one of its front legs raised and it appears to push against him. Herakles’ bow and quiver hang in the field above, and there is drapery hanging from trees or bushes to either side. White was added for Herakles’ bandolier. Below the scene are bands. There is a scraped groove at the junction of the lower wall and the foot. The upper member of the foot and the underside are reserved.

Manner of the Haimon Painter; ca 480 BC. For the painter, see C.H.E. Haspels, Attic Black-figured Lekythoi (Paris 1936) 130ff., J.D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford 1956) 538ff., Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters (Oxford 1971) 269ff. For other lekythoi of the same group with the same subject, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters, 546-547 and Paralipomena 277. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae v (1990) s.v. Herakles, nos 2093-2095 gives a short list of examples of the subject in vase-painting. No. *2095, a black-figure lekythos of the Class of Athens 581 is notably close to ours.

The capture of the Boar was Herakles’ third labour.

J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 28. Beazley Archive Pottery Database 7658.