Getty Museum
Attic Red-Figure Lekythos
Creator
Phiale PainterPainter
All works by this person →Over 200 vases decorated by the Phiale Painter have survived. Working in Athens in the period from about 450 to 425 B.C., this vase-painter specialized in painting small amphorae and lekythoi, although he also worked with many other large and small shapes. He was primarily a red-figure artist, but several of his vases in the white-ground technique also survive. The Phiale Painter decorated his vas
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 450 B.C.
- Medium
- Terracotta
- Culture
- Greek (Attic)
- Department
- Vessels
- Institution
- Getty Museum
This red-figure lekythos presents a young woman at her toilette. She glances back over her shoulder and extends her right arm, momentarily turning from contemplating herself in the mirror. The vase-painter situates her actions in a feminine setting: besides a small storage chest on the ground at the left, there is a _kalathos_, or wool basket, at the right. The use of added white paint for the woman’s body--an unusual choice in red-figure pottery of the mid-400s B.C.-- emphasizes her nudity. Texts by ancient male authors suggest that it was inappropriate for the bodies of citizen wives to be exposed, and so this woman may be a prostitute or a _hetaera_, a woman of independent means, sought after for her charm and beauty. This vase did not fire properly in the kiln. Much of its surface is a red-brown, rather than the standard deep black of Athenian pottery. The side of the lekythos to the right of the woman even has a "ghost" of a meander pattern band caused by touching another vase during firing.
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