Greek Vase Painting Research Articles

Cacus and Marsyas in Etrusco-Roman Legend

This book discusses how Greek and South Italian vase paintings of the musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas became the model for Etruscan representations of Cacus ambushed by the Vibennae brothers, two Etruscan heroes of the sixth century B.C. The study demonstrates that the Etruscans knowingly adapted Greek iconographic forms to represent their own legends.Originally published in 1982.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Vases in Middle-America - Warren Moon, Louise Berge: Greek Vase-Painting in Midwestern Collections. Pp. 231; 8 colour plates, 375 black and white figures. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1979. Paper, $15.

Vases in Middle-America - Warren Moon, Louise Berge: Greek Vase-Painting in Midwestern Collections. Pp. 231; 8 colour plates, 375 black and white figures. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1979. Paper, $15. - Volume 31 Issue 2

Greek Vase-Painting in Midwestern Collections. By Warren G. Moon.

<i>Greek Vase-Painting in Midwestern Collections</i>. By Warren G. Moon.

Leagros Kalos

In 1920 Ernst Langlotz proposed a scheme for dating Greek vases in terms of absolute and not merely relative chronology. His monograph was entitled Zur Zeitbestimmung der strengrotfigurigen Vasenmalerei und der gleichzeitigen Plastik and was dedicated to his teacher Franz Studniczka. Studniczka's own essay, ‘Zur Zeitbestimmung der Vasenmalerei mit roten Figuren’ had itself represented a landmark in the chronological study of Greek vase painting. As Langlotz's title suggests, he thought it possible to derive a dating system for Greek vases based on stylistic comparisons between the medium of Greek vase-painting and that of sculpture. The Siphnian Treasury, the Marathon Tumulus, and the Persian sack of Athens, however, provided the only supposedly fixed points in Langlotz's framework. He therefore sought other evidence which would link vase-painting to the known facts of Greek history and decided to develop Studniczka's investigation of the extent to which the subjects of kalos-inscriptions possessed an independent historical identity.

Art styles, social stratification, and cognition: an analysis of Greek vase painting1

In a diachronic study of the relationship between social stratification and formal design elements on painted vases in ancient Greece it was found that during periods of greater social stratification in the Greek city‐state of Athens there was comparatively more (1) complexity of style, (2) utilization of space, and (3) enclosure of figures in Attic painted pottery than during periods of less stratification. These results support Fischer's (1961) hypotheses concerning the relationship of social structure to art style and the value of comparative historical methods for investigating cross‐cultural hypotheses.

TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE X‐RAY TECHNIQUE IN ART: CLUES FROM OTHER ART TRADITIONS

\7~-RAY ART can be considered as one of the many techniques employed by artists ^^* to supplement human vision. It is fairly common in the world of art to show more than one would normally see under the conditions that are supposed to apply. Any art involves selection, and interpretation on the part of the artist and observer, of elements that are considered important. To the uninitiated or the unsympathetic such apparent distortion and rearrangement of component parts may be incomprehensible. For, as well as choosing from elements that are naturally visible, the artist may go further. He may choose to portray elements which he knows to exist, but according to the laws of optics are not visible from his chosen viewpoint. In Greek art, such techniques range from the naive representation of all the legs and heads of a profile four-horse chariot team in the archaic period, to the use of modelling lines, and other devices in the portrayal of drapery, to give a threedimensional or transparent effect to late fifth century sculpture. The profile head in combination with frontal chest had a long history in Egyptian and Greek art ; and in Christian art the halo and aureole add a sort of spiritual dimension to Christ, apostles and angels. Such techniques, once acquired, tend to become conventional, and persist, perhaps for hundreds of years, until fashion changes. There is no reason to suppose that the Australian Aboriginal artist was any less conservative or any less affected by the restrictions imposed by convention. Australian X-ray art in particular appears to have had a fairly long history in a reasonably restricted area.1 The style once invented obviously gained acceptance, and became as conventional as geometric, black figure or red figure in Greek vase painting. It seems to me that style, fashion and convention are of paramount importance in the persistence and perpetuation of the X-ray art style. Theories on the origin of the style can only be speculative, but this has not prevented people from looking for clues. The simple explanation art for art's sake is not a popular interpretation of the driving force behind primitive art, though it has been suggested, amongst other motives,2 for some Australian aboriginal art.

Greek Dance

Many books have been written on Greek dance. The fault which bedevils a large number of them is that their authors have tried to recreate the movements of the dances from the artistic evidence without taking into account the conventions of Greek vase-painting and sculpture. Other books, and they are the most useful, set out the literary and the artistic evidence without attempting to reconstruct the dances. Rarely, however, are the wider implications considered, and it is these which I wish to discuss here. More analysis and discussion of the evidence for many of my statements is no doubt required, but the place for that is a book rather than an article which ranges over a comparatively large field.

Quotations from Student Examination Papers

“The first pyramid was the Step Pyramid of Zoser built by the architect, Impotent.”(“Ajax and Achilles,” Greek vase painting by Exekias): “This vase painting is important, because of its great detailed figures. It shows two Greek men playing daughters in a tent.”

Greek Vase Painting

Greek Vase Painting

Dokumentationsproblemer indenfor arkæologien

Dokumentationsproblemer indenfor arkæologien

Preliminary Sketch in Greek Vase-Painting

The use of preliminary sketch in Attic red-figure is so widespread and so familiar that even in a detailed publication its presence often passes unmentioned, yet illustrations of it are not always easy to find. It may therefore be helpful to bring together some examples on which the sketch-work is of particular interest and at the same time to include instances of what is basically the same procedure, but applied to other techniques of vase-painting.As is well known, the sketch is composed of shallow grooves made in the surface of the clay before firing; the lines are most obvious in the reserved areas, but it can sometimes be seen that they extend into the black background, and when they do, the shininess of the black in the grooves shows clearly that they were made before the black was applied. The exact nature of the instrument with which the sketch was drawn is not known; the grooves generally look as if they had been made with a small, blunt tool, though whether it was wood or metal or some other material cannot be determined. Each artist no doubt had his own favourite implement, but it is worth noting that occasionally, and above all on Apulian red-figure, the sketch-lines are narrow slits cut into the clay; this kind of line, at least, must have been made with something sharp, presumably a metal graver. The amount of detail in the sketch varies from man to man, and there may even be differences between works that can be attributed to the same hand, or between the two sides of the same pot. Sometimes the artist does no more than block out the general masses and arrangement of the figures; on other vases the preliminary work is very exact and on occasion may be more detailed than the final drawing.

Paolo Enrico Arias and Max Hirmer,A History of 1000 Years of Greek Vase Painting

Paolo Enrico Arias and Max Hirmer,<i>A History of 1000 Years of Greek Vase Painting</i>

A History of 1000 Years of Greek Vase Painting

A History of 1000 Years of Greek Vase Painting

A HISTORY OF GREEK VASE PAINTING. Photographs by Max Hirmer, text and notes by P. E. Arias: translated and revised by B. B. Shefton. London, Thames and Hudson, 1963. 166 pp., 240 monochrome plates, 52 coloured. £8 8s.

A HISTORY OF GREEK VASE PAINTING. Photographs by Max Hirmer, text and notes by P. E. Arias: translated and revised by B. B. Shefton. London, Thames and Hudson, 1963. 166 pp., 240 monochrome plates, 52 coloured. £8 8s. - Volume 37 Issue 148

A History of 1000 Years of Greek Vase Painting

A History of 1000 Years of Greek Vase Painting

The Place of Vase-Painting in Greek Art

‘The vases of the classical period are but the reflection of classical beauty; the vases of the archaic period are archaic beauty itself.’ So Beazley; an indisputable and valuable truth, but a truth that needs some explanation. In spite of all the detailed work that has been done in the last fifty years and more on the development of Greek vase-painting and its relation to other arts, its nature still remains something of a problem. The issue is confused, of course, by the fact that vase-paintings are almost our only original Greek drawings—almost the only key-hole through which we can peep at archaic and classical painting—and this gives them an importance independent of their intrinsic worth.

Ships in Greek Vase-Painting

From the several references to the crews of ships in theIliadand theOdysseyit can be seen that the complement of oarsmen is usually twenty. I assume that Homer is describing the Heroic ships, the ships of the Achaeans, and not necessarily the ships of the time in which he lived. However, naval specialists from the west of Greece, like the Phaeacians, were able to build larger ships; for they sent Odysseus home to Ithaca in a ship with a crew of fifty-two. The ship, too, in which Odysseus left Troy must have been about this size; by the time it had reached Circe's island its complement had been reduced to forty-six, including Odysseus and Eurylochus, but then there had been casualties. Each of the ships which originally left Troy with Odysseus had lost six men during the attack of the Cicones; had it not been for this loss, then, the crew would have been fifty-two. It is true that Odysseus' particular ship had lost six men to Cyclops as well; but it is likely that Odysseus' ship would have been made up to strength from the other ships after the incident. It is at any rate clear that Odysseus' ship had a crew ofabout fifty, and that the pentekontor, although Homer does not use the actual word π∊ντηκóντoρoς, was in use at the time of the Trojan War.This deduction is supported by a Mycenaean vase decorated with a ship, found during the excavation of the Tragana Tholos Tomb at Pylos (Koryphasion) and dated by Furumark to 1230–1100.

Apotropaism in Greek Vase-Paintings.

Apotropaism in Greek Vase-Paintings.

A Euphronios Kylix

An inconspicuous sherd (Fig. 7) in the collection of classical pottery of the University of Chicago represents the ripe archaic period of Greek vase painting in the person of one of its greatest masters, Euphronios.1 It was probably brought from Athens by F. B. Tarbell, formerly professor of classical archaeology at the university, for Klein says, after giving a brief description of the fragment, “Nach gutiger Mittheilung von Prof. Jarbell [Tarbell]. Aus Athen, 1889 von Graef gesehen.”2 The drawing agrees stylistically with the works of Euphronios, and the design of the palmette frieze coincides exactly with the frieze on the signed fragmentary kylix of Euphronios in the Athens National Museum.3 Dr. F. P. Johnson, whose experienced assistance made possible the following study, has not come across the particular palmette design on any other vase. The obvious association of the Chicago fragment with the kylix in Athens prompted the following attempt at a reconstruction. As a basis for the reconstruction it ...

The Survival of the Euthymidean Tradition in Later Greek Vase-Painting

The Survival of the Euthymidean Tradition in Later Greek Vase-Painting