A fish plate is a Greek pottery vessel used by western, HellenisticGreeks during the fourth century BC. Although invented in fifth-century BC Athens, most of the corpus of surviving painted fish plates originate in Southern Italy, where fourth-century BC Greek settlers, called "Italiotes," manufactured them.
Campania, 325–290 BC380–75 BCBy the Scorpion Fish Painter, 380–75 BC
The form of the plate was called a "pinax" or "pinakion", meaning "tablet," because of its flat shape. The fish plate's form was that of a dimpled disk elevated on a pedestal, in other words, round and flat with a small cup in the center of plate designed to hold oil or sauce. Its rim was turned down, and often bears a decorative border, either spiraling waves, Greek key and meander motifs, or a wreath of laurel leaves. A fish plate is almost always also elevated above table level by a pedestal foot. Plates of this form are known since Minoan times (Pre-Greek), but they were not decorated with fish until the end of the fifth century BC.
History
Fish plates were first produced in Athens during the late fifth century BC. These Attic fish plates are characterized by fish whose bellies are oriented towards the outside rim of the plate. In Athens the palette was restricted to red clay fabric and black gloss slip with rare uses of white overpainting. Later, Italiote Greek settlers in Southern Italy began to mass-produce more colorful fish plates in Taranto (Greek "Taras"), Paestum (Greek "Poseidonia"), Capua (Etruscan "Capue"), and Cumae (Greek "Kyme"). The South Italian fish plates are characterized by decoration in which the fish's bellies are oriented towards the sauce cup at the center of the plate.
Workshops
Fish plates can be classified by the workshops that made them. Attic fishplates were manufactured in the Kerameikos district of Athens, Greece; Apulian fish plates were manufactured in various workshops in Taranto (Taras) on the "heel of the boot" of Italy; Campanian fish plates come from the region of the Bay of Naples, Italy (There were factories in both Capua and Cumae (Kyme)); Paestan plates were made in Paestum (Poseidonia), south of Salerno, Italy (These are the only fish plates signed by the artists, coming from the workshops of Python and Asteas.). Fish plates were made in almost all South Italian ceramic factories except for those in Lucania (on the Gulf of Taranto, the "arch of the boot" of Italy). For illustrations of fish plates made by these workshops, see the external links at the end of this article.
Decoration
All painted fish plates are red-figure ware, meaning that the creatures are left in reserve, while the body of the vessel is largely painted in black glaze. Then dilute glaze and white overpainting were applied. Sometimes, in the South Italian examples the palette is enlarged to include deep red, pink, and yellow overpainting as well. This polychrome technique with its chiaroscuro (highlights and lowlights) is called "sovradipinto." Many of the creatures pre-evidence the trompe-l'œil art characteristic of later, Graeco-Roman painting and mosaics found at Pompeii and other Roman resorts in Magna Graecia (Greek-speaking Southern Italy).
Some contend that fish plates were decorated with pictures of the seafood they were intended to hold. Most of them, however, have been found in mortuary contexts, so it might be surmised that the fish images could represent symbolic offerings for the dead. On the other hand, these plates could just as well be objects which were in popular use among the living, placed in tombs for the deceased to continue using in the hereafter. At any rate the small size of these plates could not realistically afford some of the large aquatic animals represented upon them, and the decoration must therefore be regarded as artistic or symbolic compositions rather than pictures of actual food items on the plates. The type without painted decoration continues throughout much of the Greek world until the late Hellenistic period.
Vase-Painting in Italy by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ( ISBN978-0878464067)
Arthur Dale Trendall; Ian McPhee: Greek red-figured fish-plates, Antike Kunst, Beiheft 14, Basel 1987
Norbert Kunisch: Griechische Fischteller. Natur und Bild, Berlin 1989, ISBN3-7861-1562-1
Arthur Dale Trendall; Ian McPhee: Addenda to "Greek red-figured fish-plates", in: Antike Kunst 33 (1990) S. 31–51
Arthur Dale Trendall: Rotfigurige Vasen aus Unteritalien und Sizilien. Ein Handbuch. von Zabern, Mainz 1991 (Kulturgeschichte der Antiken Welt Bd. 47) ISBN3-8053-1111-7
Christian Zindel: Meeresleben und Jenseitsfahrt. Die Fischteller der Sammlung Florence Gottet, Kilchberg/Zürich 1998, ISBN3-905083-13-2
Rolf Hurschmann: Fischteller, in Der Neue Pauly Bd. 4 (1998), Sp. 530–531.
Magna Graecia is a term that was used for the Greek-speaking areas of Southern Italy, in the present-day Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily; these regions were extensively populated by Greek settlers starting from the 8th century BC.
Paestum was a major ancient Greek city on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, in Magna Graecia. The ruins of Paestum are famous for their three ancient Greek temples in the Doric order dating from about 550 to 450 BC that are in an excellent state of preservation. The city walls and amphitheatre are largely intact, and the bottom of the walls of many other structures remain, as well as paved roads. The site is open to the public, and there is a modern national museum within it, which also contains the finds from the associated Greek site of Foce del Sele.
Red-figure pottery is a style of ancient Greek pottery in which the background of the pottery is painted black while the figures and details are left in the natural red or orange color of the clay.
The Achilles Painter was a vase-painter active ca. 470–425 BC. His name vase is an amphora, Vatican 16571, in the Vatican museums depicting Achilles and dated 450–445 BC. An armed and armored Achilles gazes pensively to the right with one hand on his hip. The other hand holds a spear. On the opposite surface a woman performs libation.
Arthur Dale Trendall, was a New Zealand art historian and classical archaeologist whose work on identifying the work of individual artists on Greek ceramic vessels at Apulia and other sites earned him international prizes and a papal knighthood.
Asteas was one of the more active ancient Greek vase painters in Magna Graecia, practicing the red-figure style. He managed a large workshop, in which above all hydriai and kraters were painted. He painted mostly mythological and theatrical scenes. He is one of the few vase painters of the Greek colonies whose name comes down to us.
South Italian is a designation for ancient Greek pottery fabricated in Magna Graecia largely during the 4th century BC. The fact that Greek Southern Italy produced its own red-figure pottery as early as the end of the 5th century BC was first established by Adolf Furtwaengler in 1893. Prior to that this pottery had been first designated as "Etruscan" and then as "Attic." Archaeological proof that this pottery was actually being produced in South Italy first came in 1973 when a workshop and kilns with misfirings and broken wares was first excavated at Metaponto, proving that the Amykos Painter was located there rather than in Athens.
The Ilioupersis Painter was an Apulian vase painter. His works are dated to the second quarter of the 4th century BC.
The Darius Painter was an Apulian vase painter and the most eminent representative at the end of the "Ornate Style" in South Italian red-figure vase painting in Magna Graecia. His works were produced between 340 and 320 BC.
Apulian vase painting was a regional style of South Italian vase painting from ancient Apulia in southeast Italy. It comprises geometric pottery and red-figure pottery.
The Painter of Nicosia Olpe was an ancient Greek vase painter, who was producing work around 575 BC to 475 BC, and these dates are concluded from the vases that were found and attributed to the specific painter. All of the pieces are black-figure, and this can also be determined by the dates. The majority of vases that he painted were larger pieces; this is not something that he had control over, but he did have control over the scenes on the vases.
Sokles was an ancient Greek potter, active in the middle of the 6th century BC, in Athens. The following signed Little-master cups or fragments thereof are known, all of them painted by the Sokles Painter:
Laconian vase painting is a regional style of Greek vase painting, produced in Laconia, the region of Sparta, primarily in the 6th century BC.
Etruscan vase painting was produced from the 7th through the 4th centuries BC, and is a major element in Etruscan art. It was strongly influenced by Greek vase painting, and followed the main trends in style over the period. Besides being producers in their own right, the Etruscans were the main export market for Greek pottery outside Greece, and some Greek painters probably moved to Etruria, where richly decorated vases were a standard element of grave inventories.
Sicilian vase painting was a regional style of South Italian red-figure vase painting fabricated in Magna Graecia. It was one of five South Italian regional styles. The vase painting of Sicily was especially closely connected with the Lucanian and Paestan styles.
Campanian vase painting is one of the five regional styles of South Italian red-figure vase painting fabricated in Magna Graecia. It forms a close stylistic community with Apulian vase painting.
Paestan vase painting was a style of vase painting associated with Paestum, a Campanian city in Italy founded by Greek colonists of Magna Graecia. Paestan vase painting is one of five regional styles of South Italian red-figure vase painting.
The Underworld Painter was an ancient Greek Apulian vase painter whose works date to the second half of the 4th century BC.
The Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl was an Apulian red-figure vase painter, who was active between 430–410 BC. He was named after a calyx krater in the collection of the Antikensammlung Berlin, which depicts a girl dancing to the aulos played by a seated woman.
Python was a Greek vase painter in the city of Poseidonia in Campania, Southern Italy, one of the major cities of Magna Graecia in the fourth Century BC. Together with his close collaborator and likely master Asteas, Python is one of only two vase painters from Southern Italy whose names have survived on extant works. It has even been suggested that the joint workshop of Asteas and Python in Paestum was a family business.
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