1965.22

Squat Lekythos

Ht 15.8cm; diam. 8.4cm.

Reconstructed from fragments with some repainting although the figurework is not seriously affected. There is a step at the junction of neck and shoulder; ring foot.

On the body is an Eros standing three-quarter right but looking back left, between two tendrils. No added colour is preserved. Below the scene is a band of egg and dot. Above, at the base of the neck, tongues.

The glaze that covers half the underside shows that the back of the vase was covered by dipping the vase in a bowl of glaze.

The lekythos is attributable to the School of the Painter of Athens 1714, as is the bull-head rhyton 1965.33. One may note that both these vases stand apart from the rest of the group in style, date and state of preservation.

Dipping the vase in a bowl of glaze as an alternative to painting it was quite common in developed Apulian red figure, especially for the backs of vases like squat lekythoi and oinochoai where there is a handle to be dealt with: see my comments in Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Philadelphia (1), text p. 11, and the discussion by T. Schreiber, “Dipping as a Glazing Technique in Antiquity”, Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum 3, 1986, 143-148. It was, of course, standard for black-glaze pottery of this and later periods.

J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 54.