The deceased lying in state

Towards the end of the sixth century BC, tombs came to be adorned with not only marble grave markers like stelai and reliefs but also clay oil jugs (lekythoi). While these were at first painted in black- and red-figure technique, in the fifth century BC the genre of white-ground lekythoi emerged. These were used exclusively in funerary rituals. Their decoration can inform us about burial customs and ideas of the afterlife – as on this unusually large lekythos, which depicts the laying out of the deceased (and whose neck was sadly lost in World War II).
In the center of the scene, the deathbed (kline) is covered with a white and dark purple cloth. The deceased, a young man with reddish-brown hair, lies on the kline wrapped completely in a light-coloured sheet. Three people gather around him to mourn. At the head of the bed to the right, an old man – probably the father – bends forward, propped up by his staff. He wears a dark purple mantle that leaves only his right arm and torso free. With his left hand he lovingly caresses his son’s head, while raising his right hand over his head in a grief-stricken gesture of mourning. At the center, partially hidden by the bier, stands a woman, likely the mother. She leans toward the deceased and stretches her hand to his face as if to embrace him. Her hair is cut short, and she wears a dark brown Ionian chiton with a red-brown mantle. In contrast to the male figures, whose skin is painted brown, the women are white (most notably their faces and arms). This also holds for the young woman at the foot of the kline, who wears a long Doric chiton and again short-cropped hair. She gestures toward the deceased with her left hand, while in her right she holds a large basket likely filled with the materials for anointing the body. A small lekythos stands under the kline. Hanging on the wall is a dark fillet that will soon decorate the grave monument. A miniature winged figure flies up from the knotted fillet: it is the eidolon, the soul of the deceased. The vase painter depicted it leaving the body at the very moment of death.
The white-ground technique introduced new pictorial possibilities, as evident in the polychrome painting on this lekythos. Carefully lined contours no longer define the picture: rather, a nuanced colour palette (including shading, as on the father’s chest) now lends depth and texture to the image.