The Penthesilea Painter (active between 470 and 450 BC at Athens) was a Greek vase painter of the Atticred-figure style. His true name is unknown. His conventional name is derived from his name vase, "bowl 2688" in Munich, the inside of which depicts the slaying of Penthesilea by Achilles. On the basis of that work, John Beazley attributed 177 known vases to the painter, about 100 of which only survive fragmentarily. Bowls, 149 in number, represent the bulk of his work. The rest is distributed among small shapes like skyphoi, kantharoi and bobbins.
His work is characterised by large, space-filling figures whose posture is often bent so as to permit them to fit on a vessel. For the same reason, ornamental decoration around the edges is often very narrow. His works are also characterised by being very colourful, permitting several intermediate shades. Apart from dark coral red and the usual light red, he also used tones of brown, yellow, yellow-white and gold. His figures are painted remarkably meticulously in every detail. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he appears to have painted the subsidiary or exterior images on his vases himself. An exception is his very early "bowl T 212" at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Ferrara, with exterior images by the Splanchnoptes Painter. The Penthesilea Painter's works are dominated by depictions of boys and youths engaged in athletic activity, teaching scenes, weaponry and armour, as well as scenes of people talking to horses. While he painted the occasional mythological motif, they are so rare that they should be considered an exception among his work. Throughout his career, scenes from everyday life gain an increasingly dominant share of his paintings.
In his later works, his love of detail is lost and replaced with stencil-like motifs, their basic compositions indistinguishable from typical mass-produced wares. His lines become more casual, but don't lose their certainty, so that even these works preserve a distinctive charm, marking him as one of the great masters of Greek vase painting. His true mastery is increasingly found in the subsidiary images of boys, on which he appears to have concentrated more and more.
His major importance for Classical vase painting lies in the fact that he moved away from the usual motifs and replaced them with typical motifs from everyday life. His emphasis on human aspects represented a new departure and was to be an important influence on the further development of vase painting.
Apart from the Penthesilea bowl, "bowl 2689", also in Munich, is considered his other masterpiece. Its interior shows the slaying of Tityos by Apollo.
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.
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.
Sophilos was an Attic potter and vase painter in the black-figure style. Sophilos is the oldest Attic vase painter so far to be known by his true name. Fragments of two wine basins ('’dinoi’’) in Athens are signed by him, indicating that he both potted and painted them. In total, 37 vessels are ascribed to him, mostly amphorae, '’dinoi’’, kraters, as well as three pinakes. Apart from his work for the domestic market, he was also one of the masters of major significance in the process of supplanting the dominance of Corinthian vase painting in the markets of Etruria, and Southern Italy, the most important export area for Greek vases. His works were exported as far as the Black Sea region, Syria and Egypt (Naukratis). He was one of the first painters to use additional colours at a grand scale, thus increasing the optical and artistic distinction between Corinthian and Attic vase painting. While he was conservative and traditionalist in terms of the ornamentation and animal figures he used, his intervening figural scenes, mostly of mythological motifs, were entirely innovative. He broke up established standard scenes, had figures act individually, and found clever and unconventional new ways of structuring the narrative. As his artistic style progressed, he increasingly pushed ornamental designs into the margin, as his figural scenes became more and more important. Stylistically, his work is close to that of the late Gorgon painter, whose style he developed further, to be continued later by Klitias, and culminate in the François vase. In spite of his innovative pictorial compositions and his talent to constantly invent new scenes; his drawing style was usually not very accurate. The overall impact of his works is hardly diminished by that.
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.
Douris or Duris was an ancient Athenian red-figure vase-painter and potter active c. 500 to 460 BCE.
Lydos was an Attic vase painter in the black-figure style. Active between about 560 and 540 BC, he was the main representative of the '’’Lydos Group’’’. His signature, ό Λυδός, ho Lydos, the Lydian, inscribed on two vases, is informative regarding the cultural background of the artist. Either he immigrated to Athens from the Lydian empire of King Kroisos, or he was born in Athens as the son of Lydian parents. In any case, he learned his trade in Athens.
Epiktetos was an Attic vase painter in the early red-figure style. Besides Oltos, he was the most important painter of the Pioneer Group. He was active between 520 BC and 490 BC. His name translates as "newly acquired" which is most probably a reference to his slave status.
The Nessos Painter, also known as Netos or Nettos Painter, was a pioneer of Attic black-figure vase painting. He is considered to be the first Athenian to adopt the Corinthian style who went on to develop his own style and introduced innovations. The Nessos Painter is often known to be one of the original painters of black-figure. He only worked in this style, which is shown on his name vase in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Most of the known Nessos Painter ceramics were found in funerary settings such as cemeteries and mortuaries.
The Amasis Painter was an ancient Greek vase painter who worked in the black-figure technique. He owes his name to the signature of the potter Amasis, who signed twelve works painted by the same hand. At the time of the exhibition, "The Amasis Painter and His World" (1985), 132 vases had been attributed to this artist.
Andokides was an ancient Athenian vase painter, active from approximately 530 to 515 B.C. His work is unsigned and his true name unknown. He was identified as a unique artistic personality through stylistic traits found in common among several paintings. This corpus was then attributed by John D. Beazley to the Andokides Painter, a name derived from the potter Andokides, whose signature appears on several of the vases bearing the painter's work. He is often credited with being the originator of the red-figure vase painting technique. To be sure, he is certainly one of the earliest painters to work in the style. In total, fourteen amphorae and two cups are attributed to his hand. Six of the amphorae are "bilingual", meaning they display both red-figure and black-figure scenes.
The Pistoxenos Painter was an important ancient Greek vase painter of the Classical period. He was active in Athens between c. 480 and 460 BC. Many vases have been attributed to his hand on the basis of style.
The Shuvalov Painter was an Attic vase painter of the red-figure style, active between 440 and 410 BC, i.e. in the High Classical period.
The Foundry Painter was an ancient Greek Attic red-figure vase painter of the Late Archaic period. His real name is unknown; the conventional name is derived from his most famous work, the Berlin Foundry Cup.
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.
The KX Painter was an Attic black-figure vase painter. He was active between 585 and 570 BC.
The Painter of the Dresden Lekanis is the common name for a vase painter of the Attic black-figure style, active around 580-570 BC. He emigrated to Boeotia and is in fact identical with the Boeotian Horse-bird Painter.
The Swing Painter was an Attic black-figure vase painter, active in the third quarter of the sixth century BC. His real name is unknown.
The Lysippides Painter was an Attic vase painter in the black-figure style. He was active around 530 to 510 BC. His real name is not known.
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