The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 25, 2024

Gravestone in the Form of a Lekythos

Gravestone in the Form of a Lekythos

300s BCE
marble
Overall: 53.7 cm (21 1/8 in.)
Gift of J. H. Wade 1925.1342
Location: 102C Greek

Did You Know?

Inscriptions identify three of the four standing figures sculpted in relief.

Description

This grave marker takes the form of a lekythos, a type of vase (usually ceramic) commonly left as a grave offering in ancient Athens. Now fragmentary, it once had a foot below and a thin neck and vertical handle above. Five sculpted figures adorn its front. At left, an unnamed woman holds an infant. To their right, a woman, Lysistrate, clasps hands with a bearded man, Timophon. Between them stands a young girl, likely Kleippe, although her name is partially lost. The scene may commemorate Lysistrate’s death in childbirth, mourned by her husband and older child. Her newborn child apparently survived.
  • ?-1925
    Zoumboulakis, sold to Brummer Gallery
    1925-1926
    Brummer Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    1926-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • The Brummer Gallery Records. Cloisters (Museum), n.d. P2144 libmma.contentdm.oclc.org
    Howard, Rossiter "Recent Greek Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 13, no. 3 (March 1926) p. 54, 59 www.jstor.org
    Art News (May 15, 1926) p. 13
    Bieber, Margarete. "An Attic Tombstone in the Art Institute of Chicago," Art in America 30 (April 1942). p. 109
    Bieber, Margarete. "Greek Sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art," Art in America Vol. 31 no. 3(July 1943). pp. 112-126, fig. 9
    Bieber, Margarete. The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955. p. 9, fig. 2
    Price, Theodora Hadzisteliou. Kourotrophos: Cults and Representations of the Greek Nursing Deities. Leiden: Brill, 1978. p. 52, no. 550, fig. 40
    Neils, Jenifer. "The Orestes Sarcophagus and Other Classical Marbles." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 71, no. 4 (1984). p. 103 www.jstor.org
    Clairmont, Christoph W., and Alexander Conze. Classical Attic Tombstones. Kilchberg, Switzerland: Akanthus, 1993. Pp. 455-456, cat. 3.745 (vol. 3).
    Neils, Jenifer, John Howard Oakley, Katherine Hart, and Lesley A. Beaumont. Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of Childhood from the Classical Past. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 2003. fig. 111, pp. 189, 296
  • Coming of Age in Ancient Greece. Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH (organizer) (August 23-December 5, 2003); Onassis Foundation Cultural Center (January 20-April 15, 2004); The Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (May 21-August 1, 2004); J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA (September 14-December 5, 2004).
  • {{cite web|title=Gravestone in the Form of a Lekythos|url=false|author=|year=300s BCE|access-date=25 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1925.1342