Greek Red-Figure Lekythos with Nike (attributed to the Berlin Painter)
Attic, ca. 490 B.C.

Dimensions: height 33.2 cm, diameter at shoulder 10.8 cm

This graceful lekythos depicts a winged Nike flying to the right and bearing a thymiaterion (incense burner) in her left hand. Her right hand lifts the pleats of her chiton, which flows behind, and she wears spiral bracelets and a himation that falls from her left shoulder.

The border of the cloak is decorated along the upper edge, her hair falling in long, twisted curls over her shoulders surmounted by a diamdem and bound by a sakkos (net) with a chignon behind. A band of alternately upright and pendant saltire squares and paired menanders frames the scene above and below, and there is an egg and dot band around the neck.

The precision and detail of the painting is attributed to the Berlin Painter (Von Bothmer), considered by many to be one of the finest painters of Attic lekythoi.

Bibliography: Antiquities from the Collection of Christos G. Bastis, Verlag Philipp von Zabern, New York: 1987.

Provenance: Acquired in New York in 1984.
Ex-collection of Christos G. Bastis