Ancient Attic Lekythos in Six’s Technique, Attributed... Lot 32

Ancient Attic Lekythos in Six’s Technique, Attributed To The Meidias Painter   Athens / 420 - 400 B.C. / Ceramic / H = 14 cm (5 33/64 in)   Extreme rare attic squat lekythos, painted in Six’s technique. Attributed to the Meidias Painter.   Meidias Painter : The Meidias painter is a Greek vase painter of the Attic red-figure style. He worked in Athens in the last quarter of the 5th century BC. Beazley called him the Meidias Painter naming him after the signature of the potter, Meidias (q.v.), whose vase in the British Museum he decorated. The Meidian style has variously been called florid or mannerist and may owe something to the rich style of Attic sculpture from the 5th century BC. His compositions are " polygnotan " in that they have no single baseline but are arranged in frieze steps across the belly of the vase. The favourite forms of Meidia's Painter and his followers were hydriai among the larger forms and squat lekythoi, choes and a variety of pyxids and lecanids preferred for smaller pieces. Meidian figures can be recognised by their long profiles, large eyes, small mouths, rounded chins and the frequency of the three-quarter portrait. His women are slender and long-legged, his men tend to be voluptuous and both enjoy tapering fingers and toes. He pays particular attention to the details of clothing, jewellery and hair; All his women wear earrings, necklaces, hair ornaments and bracelets, their hair is in individual curls and elaborate hairstyles, and their dress is usually made of sheer, multiply pleated peplos that billow out in bloom. John Beazley attributed 22 vases and fragments to the Meidias painter with a further 2 possible attributions. A definite attribution is complicated by the large number of followers that the Meidias painter's elaborate style has produced.   Intact, worn.   Provenance: Swiss private collection M. Tritten, Binningen. Before that in Swiss private collection, Basel-Landschaft.