The Pan Painter’s lekythoi at Gela

This article considers the demands on ancient vase producers and whether or not they were tempted to standardise, if not mass produce, their works, with a case study of the export of lekythoi to Gela, Sicily of vases produced by the Athenian red-figure vase painter nowadays called the Pan Painter, in the first half of the 5th century BCE, where most were deposited in tombs. These lekythoi are large oil jars decorated in a particularly refined style, with predominant iconography involving Nikai and other single figures. Of the Pan Painter’s lekythoi, however, a disproportionate number—11—were found in Gela, which is more than half of his 20 lekythoi with recorded findspots and more than a third of his total known output of 30