In classical archaeology, a name vase is a specific "vase"[1] whose painter's name is unknown but whose workshop style has been identified. The painter is conventionally named after the selected "name vase" that embodies his characteristic style, or for one of its distinctive painted subjects, or for other attributes.
The allocation of such names is necessary because the majority of ancient Greek and South Italian vase painters did not sign their works. For discussion and analysis of the work and career of individual artists conventional names were needed in order to designate them. The name can refer to a vase's motif (the Meleager Painter), former owner (the Shuvalov Painter), present location (the Baltimore Painter), find location (the Dipylon Master), inscription, habitual potter (the Kleophrades Painter), shape, and so on. For Athenian vases, the majority of such names were introduced by John D. Beazley, the first scholar to study them systematically; for South Italian vases, Arthur Dale Trendall played a similar role.
In the pottery of ancient Greece, a kylix is the most common type of wine-drinking cup. It has a broad, relatively shallow, body raised on a stem from a foot and usually two horizontal handles disposed symmetrically. The main alternative wine-cup shape was the kantharos, with a narrower and deeper cup and high vertical handles.
Ancient Greek pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it, it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society. The shards of pots discarded or buried in the 1st millennium BC are still the best guide available to understand the customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks. There were several vessels produced locally for everyday and kitchen use, yet finer pottery from regions such as Attica was imported by other civilizations throughout the Mediterranean, such as the Etruscans in Italy. There were various specific regional varieties, such as the South Italian ancient Greek pottery.
Black-figure pottery painting, also known as the black-figure style or black-figure ceramic is one of the styles of painting on antique Greek vases. It was especially common between the 7th and 5th centuries BC, although there are specimens dating as late as the 2nd century BC. Stylistically it can be distinguished from the preceding orientalizing period and the subsequent red-figure pottery style.
Exekias was an ancient Greek vase-painter and potter who was active in Athens between roughly 545 BC and 530 BC. Exekias worked mainly in the black-figure technique, which involved the painting of scenes using a clay slip that fired to black, with details created through incision. Exekias is regarded by art historians as an artistic visionary whose masterful use of incision and psychologically sensitive compositions mark him as one of the greatest of all Attic vase painters. The Andokides painter and the Lysippides Painter are thought to have been students of Exekias.
Red-figure vase painting is one of the most important styles of figural Greek vase painting.
The Kleophon Painter is the name given to an anonymous Athenian vase painter in the "red figure" style who flourished in the mid-to-late 5th century BCE. He is thus named because one of the works attributed to him bears an inscription in praise of a youth named "Kleophon". He appears to have been originally from the workshop of Polygnotos, and in turn to have taught the so-called "Dinos Painter". Three vases suggest a collaboration with the Achilles Painter, while a number of "black figure" works have also been attributed to him by some scholars.
The Kleophrades Painter is the name given to the anonymous red-figure Athenian vase painter, who was active from approximately 510 – 470 BCE and whose work, considered amongst the finest of the red figure style, is identified by its stylistic traits.
A kantharos or cantharus is a type of ancient Greek cup used for drinking. Although almost all surviving examples are in Greek pottery, the shape, like many Greek vessel types, probably originates in metalwork. In its iconic "Type A" form, it is characterized by its deep bowl, tall pedestal foot, and pair of high-swung handles which extend above the lip of the pot. The Greek words kotylos and kotyle are other ancient names for this same shape.
Euphronios was an ancient Greek vase painter and potter, active in Athens in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC. As part of the so-called "Pioneer Group,", Euphronios was one of the most important artists of the red-figure technique. His works place him at the transition from Late Archaic to Early Classical art, and he is one of the first known artists in history to have signed his work.
The Berlin Painter is the conventional name given to an Attic Greek vase-painter who is widely regarded as a rival to the Kleophrades Painter, among the most talented vase painters of the early 5th century BCE.
Geometric art is a phase of Greek art, characterized largely by geometric motifs in vase painting, that flourished towards the end of the Greek Dark Ages, circa 900 BC – 700 BC. Its center was in Athens, and from there the style spread among the trading cities of the Aegean. The Greek Dark Ages are also called the Geometric period in reference to this characteristic pottery style, although the historical period is much longer than the art-historical period, being circa 1100 – 800 BC. The vases had various uses or purposes within Greek society, including, but not limited to, funerary vases and symposium vases.
The Brygos Painter was an ancient Greek Attic red-figure vase painter of the Late Archaic period. Together with Onesimos, Douris and Makron, he is among the most important cup painters of his time. He was active in the first third of the 5th century BCE, especially in the 480s and 470s BCE. He was a prolific artist to whom over two hundred vases have been attributed, but he is perhaps best known for the Brygos Cup, a red-figure kylix in the Louvre which depicts the "iliupersis" or sack of Troy.
The Kerch style, also referred to as Kerch vases, is an archaeological term describing vases from the final phase of Attic red-figure pottery production. Their exact chronology remains problematic, but they are generally assumed to have been produced roughly between 375 and 330/20 BC. The style is characterized by slender mannered figures and a polychromatism given to it by the use of white paint and gilding.
The pottery of ancient Greece has a long history and the form of Greek vase shapes has had a continuous evolution from Minoan pottery down to the Hellenistic era. As Gisela Richter puts it, the forms of these vases find their "happiest expression" in the 5th and 6th centuries BC, yet it has been possible to date vases thanks to the variation in a form’s shape over time, a fact particularly useful when dating unpainted or plain black-gloss ware.
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 B.C. 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.
Apulian vase painting was a regional style of South Italian vase painting from ancient Apulia. It comprises geometric pottery and red figure pottery.
The Oreithyia painter was an ancient Greek red-figure vase painter who flourished from 470–460 BCE. He is one of the many painters of the red-figure Classical Period, but his work is not considered the finest or well-known. This is partly because he began painting during the transition from red-figure to black-figure pottery.
Gnathia vases are a type of pottery belonging to ancient Apulian vase painting of the 4th century BC.
The modern scholarly term Hâdra vases describes a group of Hellenistic painted hydriai. Apart from late Panathenaic prize amphorae, it is the only substantial group of figurally or ornamentally painted vases in the Greek world of the 3rd century BC.
The Dinos of the Gorgon Painter is an important example of ancient Greek pottery, produced at Athens around 580 BC. It entered the Louvre's collection in 1861, with the purchase of Giampietro Campana's collection.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
