The Master of the Achilles Amphora in the Vatican

Abstract

The two vases reproduced on Pl. 13 and Pl. 14. 2 are the earliest redfigured lekythoi on which a grave-stele is represented. Shape and patterns and composition are the same in both; and if we compare the drawing of legs, arms, heads, and feet in the two vases, we shall find the closest resemblances. Now put the legs of the youth on a third lekythos (Fig. 2) beside the male legs on the two stele-vases: and the woman on Pl. 13 beside the standing women on a fourth lekythos, Pl. 14. 1, and a fifth, Fig. 3. Then let us turn to the Nolan amphora on p. 183, Fig. 4; surely the youth on A is strangely like the two youths and the man on our lekythoi: and now look at the figure on the reverse of the vase (Fig. 5(l)): have we not seen that himation before? and where if not in Pl. 14. 1 and Fig. 3? But no fewer than fifteen such himatia are collected in Fig. 5: each of the fifteen figures who wear them is the ‘mantle-figure’ drawn on the back of a vase. Would it not be interesting to know what the figures on the front of these vases were like?