The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 17, 2025

Orange ceramic loutrophoros a vessel with a round body and flaring cylindrical neck as tall as the base, handles curving down either side. On the body, women with light skin tone in black robes surround a corpse on a bier, colored in solid black. Around the neck, more such women circle with simple line and geometric patterns dividing the scenes and lining the vessels upper and lower edges.

Black-Figure Loutrophoros-Amphora (Ritual Water Vessel): Prothesis (Laying out of Corpse), Mourners

c. 500 BCE

Greek, Attic

ceramic
Overall: 43.5 cm (17 1/8 in.)
The Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund 1927.145
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Mourning figures wrap all the way around this vessel, even beneath the handles.

Description

The loutrophoros, a tall-necked water vessel, served two main purposes in ancient Athens. In life, it carried sacred spring water for ceremonial pre-marriage baths. After death, it marked the tomb of an unmarried person, as if to account for that not experienced in life. Often, as here, it has no bottom, permitting offerings to flow through to the grave. Both the precise shape of this vase—a two-handled loutrophoros-amphora rather than a three-handled loutrophoros-hydria—and its depiction of the deceased suggest the commemoration of a departed man (rather than a woman). The iconography is entirely funerary, with multiple mourning figures shown: four women on the neck; six women surrounding the corpse on its bier; and three men making farewell gestures. The inscriptions near some of the mourning women do not spell out real words but may represent their sorrowful cries.
  • ?-1926
    Zoumpoulakis, sold to Brummer Gallery
    1926-1927
    Brummer Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    1927-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Beazley Archive. n.d. Beazley Archive Pottery Database. Oxford: Beazley Archive. BAPD 761 www.beazley.ox.ac.uk
    The Brummer Gallery Records. Cloisters (Museum), n.d. P3582 libmma.contentdm.oclc.org
    Howard, Rossiter, "Two Greek Vases." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 14, no. 6 (1927): 99-101. www.jstor.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1928. Reproduced: p. 74 archive.org
    "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 15, no. 2 (Feb. 1928): 35-37. www.jstor.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 26 archive.org
    Greater Cleveland Social Science Program. The Human Adventure, I: Ancient Civilization; Teachers' Guide. Grade Five. 1965. Vol. 1, p. 164
    Boulter, C. G., Jenifer Neils, and Gisela Walberg. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971. p. 11, Pls. 15-16 www.beazley.ox.ac.uk
    Finkenstaedt, Elizabeth. "Mycenaean Mourning Customs in Greek Painting." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 60, no. 2 (1973): 39-43. www.jstor.org
    Folsom, Robert Slade. Attic Black-Figured Pottery. Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Press, 1975. pl. 34
    Immerwahr, Henry R. A Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions (CAVI). [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified], 1998. no. 3201, p. 790
    Pedrina, Marta. I gesti del dolore nella ceramica attica (VI-V secolo a.C.): per un'analisi della comunicazione non verbale nel mondo greco. Venezia: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2001. fig. 46, p. 269.
  • Exhibition of the Month: Components of Art: The Line. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 12-April 12, 1948).
    The Silver Jubilee Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 28, 1941).
  • {{cite web|title=Black-Figure Loutrophoros-Amphora (Ritual Water Vessel): Prothesis (Laying out of Corpse), Mourners|url=false|author=|year=c. 500 BCE|access-date=17 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1927.145