Pseudo-Chalcidian vase painting was strongly influenced by Chalcidian vase painting, but also shows influences from Attic and Corinthian vase painting. The potters used the Ionic alphabet (and not the Chalcidian one) for added inscriptions. The clays were of a different fabric from those used for Chalcidian pottery. By now, about 60 vases of the style are known (they were compiled for the first time by Andreas Rumpf). The potters/painters may have been the successors of those who produced Chalcidian pottery, as well as some potters newly immigrated to Etruria.
Pseudo-Chalcidian vase painting can be subdivided in two groups. The older of the two is the Polyphemus Group. It produced the majority of known vases, mainly neck amphorae and oinochoai. Most show groups of animals, mythological imagery is rare (Herakles, Hephaistos). The vessels were found in Etruria and Sicily, but also in Marseille and Vix. The more recent and less productive memnon Group, to which 12 vessels can be ascribed, had a much less extensive distribution, limited exclusively to Etruria and Sicily. Apart from a single small oinochoe, it only produced neck amphorae, usually painted with animals and horsemen. There is a single depiction of a chariot race, as well as one amphora with Odysseus and Circe.
Bibliography
Robert Manuel Cook, Greek Painted Pottery, London ; New York, Routledge, 1997, ISBN978-0-415-13859-8
F. Canciani, Calcidesi, vasi, in Enciclopedia dell'arte antica classica e orientale (Secondo supplemento), Roma, Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1994.
F. Canciani, "Eine neue Amphora aus Vulci und das Problem der pseudochalkidischen Vasen", in JDI 95, 1980, pp. 140-162
M.Iozzo, Ceramica «calcidese». Nuovi documenti e problemi riproposti, “Atti e Memorie della Società Magna Grecia” S. III, vol. II (1993), Roma 1994 (in particolare Capitolo III)
M.Iozzo, Catalogo dei vasi «calcidesi» del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze, Pontedera 1996
M. Denoyelle-M. Iozzo, La céramique grecque d'Italie méridionale et de Sicile, Paris 2009
M. Iozzo, “La ceramica «calcidese». Temperie artistica e produzione artigianale a Rhegion in età arcaica”, in E. Lippolis (ed.), I Greci in Occidente. Arte e artigianato in Magna Grecia, Catalogo Mostra Taranto 1996, pp. 313-321
M.Iozzo, “Articolazione e struttura dell'officina «calcidese»: un tentativo di analisi attraverso l'esame stilistico”, in Céramique et peinture grecques: modes d'emploi, Rencontres de l'École du Louvre 26-28.4.1995, Paris 1999, pp. 289-303
M. Iozzo, “Un'anfora a New York: osservazioni sui vasi “calcidesi” e “pseudocalcidesi”, in Mediterranea VII, 2010, pp. 169-183
“Un eccezionale erotikon «calcidese»: Ninfe e Sileni nell’ebbrezza dionisiaca, in Ocnus 28, 2020, pp. 35-53
An amphora is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly against each other in storage rooms and packages, tied together with rope and delivered by land or sea. The size and shape have been determined from at least as early as the Neolithic Period. Amphorae were used in vast numbers for the transport and storage of various products, both liquid and dry, but mostly for wine. They are most often ceramic, but examples in metals and other materials have been found. Versions of the amphorae were one of many shapes used in Ancient Greek vase painting.
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 a multitude of 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 BCE, although there are specimens dating as late as the 2nd century BCE. 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 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.
Nikosthenes was a potter of Greek black- and red-figure pottery in the time window 550–510 BC. He signed as the potter on over 120 black-figure vases, but only nine red-figure. Most of his vases were painted by someone else, called Painter N. Beazley considers the painting "slovenly and dissolute;" that is, not of high quality. In addition, he is thought to have worked with the painters Anakles, Oltos, Lydos and Epiktetos. Six's technique is believed to have been invented in Nikosthenes' workshop, possibly by Nikosthenes himself, around 530 BC. He is considered transitional between black-figure and red-figure pottery.
Panathenaic amphorae were the amphorae, large ceramic vessels, that contained the olive oil given as prizes in the Panathenaic Games. Some were ten imperial gallons and 60–70 cm (24–28 in) high. This oil came from the sacred grove of Athena at Akademia. The amphorae which held it had the distinctive form of tight handles, narrow neck and feet, and they were decorated with consistent symbols, in a standard form using the black figure technique, and continued to be so, long after the black figure style had fallen out of fashion. Some Panathenaic amphorae depicted Athena Promachos, goddess of war, advancing between columns brandishing a spear and wearing the aegis, and next to her the inscription τῶν Ἀθήνηθεν ἄθλων "(one) of the prizes from Athens". On the back of the vase was a representation of the event for which it was an award. Sometimes roosters are depicted perched on top of the columns. The significance of the roosters remains a mystery. Later amphorae also had that year's archon's name written on it making finds of those vases archaeologically important.
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, c. 900–700 BC. Its center was in Athens, and from there the style spread among the trading cities of the Aegean. The Greek Dark Ages lasted from c. 1100 to 750 BC and include two periods, the Protogeometric period and the Geometric period, in reference to the characteristic pottery style. The vases had various uses or purposes within Greek society, including, but not limited to, funerary vases and symposium vases.
In the Archaic phase of ancient Greek art, the Orientalizing period or Orientalizing revolution is the cultural and art historical period that began during the later part of the 8th century BC, when there was a heavy influence from the more advanced art of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East. The main sources were Syria and Assyria as well as Phoenicia and Egypt. With the spread of Phoenician civilization by Carthage and Greek colonisation into the Western Mediterranean, these artistic trends also influenced the Etruscans and early Ancient Romans in the Italian peninsula.
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 period. 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 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.
Amasis was an ancient Attic potter, active in Athens between 560/550 and 530/520 BC. Amasis’s pottery workshop also employed a well-known painter, who is conventionally named the Amasis Painter after the potter, and generally considered one of the best Archaic vase painters. His works are mostly black-figure, but some red-figure vase paintings by him do occur. He and Exekias produced the first major painted amphorae with a narrative image on front and back, respectively. Famous works:
The Lysippides Painter was an Attic vase painter in the black-figure style. He was active around 530 to 510 BC. His conventional name comes from a kalos inscription on a vase in the British Museum attributed to him; his real name is not known.
Laconian vase painting is a regional style of Greek vase painting, produced in Laconia, the region of Sparta, primarily in the 6th century BC.
The Pontic Group is a sub-style of Etruscan black-figure vase painting.
Chalcidian pottery is an important style of Western Greek black-figure vase painting.
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.
The Judgement of Paris Amphora is an Attic black-figure amphora named for the scene depicted on it. It is held by the Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon with the inventory number E 581-c and is attributed to the London B76 Painter, who was active at Athens in the second quarter of the sixth century BC.
The Dipylon Amphora is a large Ancient Greek painted vase, made around 760-750 BC, and is now held by the National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Discovered at the Dipylon cemetery, this stylistic vessel belonging to the Geometric period is credited to an unknown artist: the Dipylon Master. The amphora is covered entirely in ornamental and geometric patterns, as well as human figures and animal-filled motifs. It is also structurally precise, being that it is as tall as it is wide. These decorations use up every inch of space, and are painted on using the black-figure technique to create the silhouetted shapes. Inspiration for the Greek vase derived not only from its intended purpose as a funerary vessel, but also from artistic remnants of Mycenaean civilization prior to its collapse around 1100 BC. The Dipylon Amphora signifies the passing of an aristocratic woman, who is illustrated along with the procession of her funeral consisting of mourning family and friends situated along the belly of the vase. The woman's nobility and status is further emphasized by the plethora of detail and characterized animals, all which remain in bands circling the neck and belly of the amphora.
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