Some Red-figure Vase-painters of the Chalcidice

Abstract

The four seasons of excavation conducted by D. M. Robinson at Olynthos between 1928 and 1938 produced a large quantity of red-figure pottery from settlement and cemetery. This material was published in volumes 5 and 13 of the final report. Robinson recognized that many of the red-figure fragments were of local Chalcidic fabric, and he tried to distinguish a few hands, but he made no detailed study. In ARV 1507–9 J. D. Beazley attributed a number of vases to a Painter of Olynthos 5.156 and a Group of Olynthos 5.141, and noted that they ‘might be local Olynthian’ but he ‘did not see that they differed from Attic in clay or technique’. More recently a few local red-figure vases, from private collections and rescue excavations, have been published, and others, still unpublished, are on display in the museums of Salonica and Polygiros. The excavations at Torone, still in progress, have also produced some fragments of non-Attic red-figure. On the basis of this material I have tried to distinguish more clearly some of the red-figure painters active in the Chalcidice in the fourth century; but I ought to emphasize that there are many vases and fragments not included here.