(Circle of the Painter of Haimon)

The lekythos is the funerary oil container par excellence of Attic ceramics: the la variant with the cylindrical, elongated body with the disk-shaped foot and shoulder with angular profile, introduced in the final decades of the 6th century before becoming, in the following century, the dominant form. This example, which was decorated in the old Archaic black figure technique with some details painted in white and highlighted in purple, is whole but reassembled.
The legend of Troilos, who was killed by Achilles, was very well known from classical mythology and was one of the first to appear in ancient iconography. According to an oracle, if Troilos, the youngest son of Priam (or of Apollo according to another version of the myth) and Hecuba, reaches the age of twenty years, the city of Troy will never be able to betaken; beforehand, another oracle had predicted to the mother of Achilles, Thetis, that her son would die in front of the city of Troy. The ambush of the young prince, which occurred shortly after the arrival of the Greeks in Asia, was therefore considered a turning point in the development of the entire Trojan War since in killing Troilos, not only did Achilles make the entire epic possible, he also sealed his own fate. The ambush took place at a fountain near the temple of Apollo: Troilos, accompanied by his sister, Polyxena, was going to the wells of the city to wash his hair and fill the hydriai with water. In the ancient iconography, two moments were chosen by the artists in their telling of this tale. In the first case, Achilles is hidden behind the fountain while the two youngsters approach; in the other - which is represented on this lekythos - the hero is already in the middle of pursuing the two siblings: Troilos flees on horseback, spilling the contents of the hydria, which has fallen to the ground, while Polyxena runs with great strides before him. Here the fountain is represented as a sort of pillar with a gargoyle with a head of a lion that spits a jet of water. Achilles, who is dressed in a short chiton applied in white paint, resembles a Greek hoplite from the Classical period: he is armed with a large shield, a sword and two lances; on his head he wears a raised Corinthian helmet. Troilos, whose small size designates him as a child, is dressed in a large black and white cloak; he is trying to flee by urging his horse to a full gallop; in front of the animals, Polyxena, - whose white skin clearly designates her as a feminine figure after an iconographic convention established during the archaic period - runs with long strides to the right; she is dressed in a long chiton, on top of which she wears a cloak.
This lekythos belongs to the last group of black figure vessels (often with white ground) that were very popular at the end of the 6th century B.C. It can probably be attributed to the circle of the Painter of Haimon (so named because of Hemon, son of Kreon, who was the final victim of the Sphinx of Thebes: this subject has been represented many times by this group of painters), on of the most active groups from the first half of the fifth century. Even if technically the works of these artists (especially the lekythoi or skyphoi) are of good quality, stylistically, the line is often hasty, even hesitant, and the compositions sometimes approximations and very succinct.

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