By: Pieter Broucke, Professor of History of Art and Architecture
In 2010, the College Museum acquired a white-ground lekythos (Figure 1). Decorated in the so-called “white-ground red-figure” style of vase painting, the lekythos was meant to complement the white-ground black-figure lekythos that had been the first acquisition by the Friends of the Art Museum back in 1969 (MCMA. 1969.019). That vase was recently attributed to the Marathon Painter.
The white-ground red-figure lekythos was acquired from the Royal Athena Galleries in 2009. Its provenance was given as “with Gallerie Fischer, Lucerne, 1960,” one of Switzerland most prominent auction houses at the time. Its provenance, however, goes back to 1892, when it was deaccessioned from a Swedish collection (Figure 2). A label on the bottom of the foot states, in Swedish, “Vase from Pompeii, purchased [at the] house [of] art dealer Mattson, in December of 1892.” Catalogued by a person with the initials “E. E.,” it states that it had “belonged to Prof. Isæus, Stockholm.” A second label is partially preserved and barely legible. It reads, also in Swedish, “VASE from POMPEI[I]”. Professor Magnus Isæus was a Swedish architect. In addition to buildings in Sweden, he designed the Swedish pavilion for the 1876 world exhibition in Philadelphia. That structure was later moved to Central Park, known to this day as the Swedish Cottage and used as a puppet theater. Isæus traveled widely, including to Italy in 1883.
The lekythos is reconstructed from sherds. No sherds are missing, however, so it is likely that the vessel broke in modern times and was professionally restored, the joints carefully masked by paint that has somewhat discolored. The surface, especially on the white-ground part of the body below the shoulder, is abraded. Some of the black lines of the figure have worn off, especially around the eye, the left foot, and the drapery next to the left foot. The surface overall has a layer of sooth, as if the vase has been in a smoky environment.
The lekythos has a disk-like “torus foot,” a fairly cylindrical body, sharp shoulders, a narrow neck, and a cup mouth. Its shape is of the so-called “Aischines Tymbos Lekythos Type,” named for two Athenian vase painters—the Aischines Painter and the Tymbos Painter—both of whom made frequent use of this shape during the early Classical Period, the second quarter of the fifth century BCE.
The shoulder of the Middlebury lekythos is decorated with four black-figure palmettes, alternating between facing up and facing down, connected by a thin line (Figure 3.a). By the second quarter of the fifth century BCE, black-figure palmettes were rather old-fashioned. They tend to be seen in the circle of the Bowdoin Painter, an environment that includes both the Aischines Painter (Figures 3.b and 4) and the Tymbos Painter. These two artists are artistically close and, since they decorated vases of the same shapes, probably worked in the same potter’s workshop. Both artists decorated their vases in the “regular” red-figure and, as is the case here, in the so-called white-ground red-figure technique.
Imagery on the body is restricted to the front of the vessel. On our lekythos we find a single figure, a heavily draped woman wearing a sakkos (“σάκκος” in Greek, a sack-like cap or head scarf) and a thyrsus (“θύρσος” in Greek; a staff made of a fennel stalk, wreathed in ivy or vines, usually topped with a pinecone) in her left hand. Although her attire and presentation are simple, the heavy drapery—a thick cloak over a delicate himation—and the scepter both hint that she is wealthy and important.
The Tymbos Painter, whose “name vase” depicts a tomb (“τύμβος” in Greek), is mostly associated with funerary subject matter, whereas the Aischines Painter preferred subjects that were not funerary in nature, as is the case here.
The Aischines Painter’s name and back story are unknown, but scholars have identified him as an artist with distinct stylistic characteristics. Beazley named the artist the Aischines Painter after an inscription “Αισχίνης καλός” (“Aischines is beautiful” in Greek), on one of his vases. John Beazley, the great twentieth-century scholar of Greek vase painting, attributed about two hundred and fifty vases to this artist, some forty of them white-ground red-figure lekythoi.
The arrangement of palmettes and shoulder meander seen on the Middlebury and Baltimore lekythoi (compare Figures 3a, 3b, and 3c) is also found on additional white-ground lekythoi attributed to the Aischines Painter, including one at the Nasher Museum at Duke University (Figure 5).
The closest parallel to the Middlebury lekythos is a white-ground red-figure lekythos at the at the University Museum in Tübingen (Figure 6). It has the same palmette arrangement on the shoulder, the same decorative band with key meanders facing right, and the same banded pattern below the figural scene. Like the Middlebury vase, it has a torus foot the vertical edge of which is left red.
Further affirmation for the attribution of the Middlebury red-figure white-ground lekythos to the Aischines Painter is provided by the iconography of the figural scene itself. First, the artist seems to have favored single figures for his scenes, and that is the case with the Middlebury lekythos and all the comparanda vases here discussed.
Similarities may also be noted in the treatment of the drapery. On the Middlebury lekythos the folds of the heavy cloak function more like fillers that suggest, rather than describe, fabric draped around the figure’s body. The drapery on the Middlebury lekythos is not well preserved but we can see small tassels at the ends of the woman’s garments (two, both to the right of the figure). We see this also on other vases by the Aischines Painter. On the Middlebury lekythos, the closely spaced folds of the chiton, a light woven garment under the cloak, are rendered with the same nervous parallel lines, rapidly applied, as on the red-figure white-ground lekythos at the Walters Art Museum, both around the figure’s shoulders and around her lower legs (Figure 4).
As mentioned, the figure on the Middlebury lekythos is wearing a sakkos that covers most of her hair and terminates in a point. That is also the case on the Tübingen University Museum lekythos, although that sakkos is more intricately rendered. The sakkos depicted on the Walters Art Museum lekythos is somewhere in between that on the Tübingen and Middlebury lekythoi (Compare Figures 1, 4, and 5).
Anatomical details also point to the Aischines Painter. The figure on the Middlebury lekythos has a small, rounded ear, positioned high on the head. Similar ears are seen on the Walters lekythos. All figures have heavy, somewhat bloblike “sideburns.” All have pointy, forward-sloping noses, thick lips, and heavy rounded chins. The eye on the Middlebury lekythos is somewhat abraded, but the parts that are preserved are close to those on the Tübingen lekythos.
Given the similarities in terms of overall shape of the lekythos, shoulder decoration, subject matter, figural composition, rendition of drapery, and representation of anatomical details observed between the Middlebury lekythos and several lekythoi attributed to the Aischines Painter, the former may be securely attributed to that artist as well.
The single figure depicted is a maenad, a female follower of Dionysos, the god of wine and merriment. Meanads have as attributes a sakkos covering their hair and a thyrsus. Our maenad has one foot pointing to the right and her thyrsos is leaning in that direction as well, as if anticipating movement towards the right. Her body is turned frontally, however, and her head faces towards the left. The resulting effect is of a figure eager to move to the right but seeming to be waiting for something or someone from the left. The figure is balanced and static, but the depiction implies motion.
Single figures involved in activities of daily life, not in funerary rituals, are the typical subject matter for the Aischines Painter. In the case of the Middlebury lekythos, that is a woman on her way to a Dionysiac celebration, a celebration of life.
While it is not likely that Middlebury’s red-figure white-ground lekythos attributed to the Aischines Painter was excavated at Pompeii as the label states, it is entirely possible that it was acquired in Campania, the area around Naples, and was then perhaps sold at Pompeii. Several vases by the Aischines Painter have been found in tombs in Southern Italy where, in antiquity, Attic white-ground vases were imported in large numbers for use as funerary deposits. Its importation into Magna Graecia, however, fell off dramatically by the middle of the fifth century BCE. The Middlebury red-figure white-ground lekythos, created in the first half of the fifth century BCE and now securely attributed to the Aischines Painter, predates that development.
