An Attic white-ground lekythos
Attributed to the Quadrate Painter, circa 450-430 B.C.
Depicting a youth, wearing a red himation draped around his waist, seated before a tomb, the stepped stele surmounted by acanthus leaves with a bird atop, adorned with fillets, a warrior standing on the other side, his helmeted head bowed and leaning on a spear, a bird perched on his outstretched left hand, a band of meander with checker squares above, the shoulder decorated with palmettes and scrolling tendrils, 29cm high注脚Provenance:
Louis-François-Sébastien Fauvel (1753-1838) collection, Athens.
Gottfried and Helga Hertel collection, Cologne, acquired in the 1970s.
Beazley Archive no. 216693.

Published:
Otto von Stackelberg, Die Gräber der Hellenen, Berlin, 1837, pl. 46.1.
J.D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, vol. II, London, 1984, p. 1238, no. 39.

From the late 6th Century onwards it was customary to use lekythoi for the pouring of offering oil over the tombs of the deceased and in the latter half of the 5th Century, the white-ground lekythos became the popular funerary vase. The above lekythos shows a typical mourning scene. For a white-ground lekythos by the Quadrate Painter with another example of the stele with acanthus and bird, see the Antikensammlung, Berlin, acc. no. F2452, Beazley Archive vase no. 216694.

Louis-François-Sébastien Fauvel, a French diplomat and painter, was one of the earliest archaeologists in Greece. From 1784 onwards he travelled in Greece discovering and acquiring antiquities for himself and his patron, the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, before settling permanently in Athens in 1793, and serving as Vice-Consul of France in Athens from 1803. He is known to have competed against Lord Elgin's agents for the purchase of the Parthenon marbles; though he failed to obtain the larger sections, he did succeed in sending a metope and smaller section of the Parthenon frieze to the Louvre.