Eggs are well attested as funerary offerings—real eggs, artistic counterparts in marble and terracotta or, as here, diminutive vases of egg shape. This example was found with another, now in Athens, and both originally had lids. The abduction scene has been interpreted as depicting Paris and Helen. The shape is particularly pertinent to the subject because Helen was hatched from an egg.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta oon (egg)
Artist:Attributed to the Washing Painter
Period:Classical
Date:ca. 420–410 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; red-figure
Dimensions:H. 2 in. (5.1 cm) diameter 1 3/4 in. (4.5 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Gift of Alastair Bradley Martin, 1971
Accession Number:1971.258.3
Possibly from a tomb in the vicinity of Athens (Metzger 1944, p. 69, note 1)
By 1961 and until 1971, collection of Alastair Bradley Martin, New York; acquired in 1971, gift of A. B. Martin.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1961. Ancient Art from New York Private Collections: Catalogue of an Exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 17, 1959–February 28, 1960. no. 246, pp. 62–63, pls. 91-92, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1972. Greek Vase Painting: An Introduction. no. 31, pp. 8, 62, 71, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1972. "Greek Vase Painting." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 31(1): no. 26, pp. 60–61, 68.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1975. "Greek and Roman Art." Notable Acquisitions (Metropolitan Museum of Art), No. 1965/1975: p. 128.
Harrison, Evelyn B. 1984. "A Pheidian head of Aphrodite Ourania." Hesperia, 53(4): p. 387 n. 44.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1988. Vol. 4: Eros-Herakles. "Helene," pp. 530–31, no. 171, pl. 322, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 148, pp. 135, 434, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Lezzi-Hafter, Adrienne. 2009. "Wheel without Chariot – A Motif in Attic Vase-Painting." Athenian Potters and Painters, Vol. 2, John H. Oakley and Olga Palagia, eds. p. 156 n. 31, Oxford: Oxbow Books.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
