White-Ground Lekythos Depicting a Scene at a Tomb

This white-ground lekythos (a pitcher for carrying oil or perfume) depicts a woman visiting the tomb of her baby son, shown sitting on top of a stepped grave monument. The heavily draped woman is accompanied by a slave girl, characterized as such by her distinctive cropped hairstyle and unidealized facial features. She approaches from the other side carrying offerings for the tomb: she balances a basket of sashes on her head and holds an alabastron (perfume vase) in her hand.

Such graveside scenes are typical of white-ground lekythoi, which were themselves intended as grave goods and used in funerary ritual. The term 'white-ground' refers to the style of decoration, whereby the body of the vase was covered with a slip that turned white during firing. Figures were then drawn in outline and completed with added colours such as red, blue, yellow and purple. These colors tend to fade over time due to the fragility of the paint, eventually prompting the technique to be limited exclusively to the decoration of funerary lekythoi.