ATTRIBUTED TO THE WASHING PAINTER, CIRCA 430-420 B.C.

The Washing Painter is thought to have been the first painter to specialise in smaller versions of well-established vase shapes, with an emphasis on diminutive pelikai and hydriai (M. Robertson, The Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens, Cambridge, 1992, p. 223). His "best" works are his scenes which centre on life in the "woman's world" (op. cit. p. 225), as with the present lot, with its depiction of a dressing scene within the female quarters. This scene may show a bride preparing for her wedding; B. Barr Scharrer has suggested that a single sandal can be ''a symbol of union...suggestive of erotic commitment" in reference to an Attic hydria in the manner of the Meidias Painter of the same period, which shows a woman raising her left foot for a sandal to be fastened by Eros (The Derveni Krater, Princeton, 2008, p. 153). The reverse scene of the present lot shows the contents of the kalathos being offered for consecration, a duty often undertaken by women in preparation for cultic rituals.