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.
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 in 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.
Psiax was an Attic vase painter of the transitional period between the black-figure and red-figure styles. His works date to circa 525 to 505 BC and comprise about 60 surviving vases, two of which bear his signature. Initially he was allocated the name "Menon Painter" by John Beazley. Only later was it realised that the artist was identical with the painters signing as "Psiax".
Panathenaic amphorae were the amphorae, large ceramic vessels, that contained the olive oil given as a prize 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 and a little later, c. 1050–700 BC. Its center was in Athens, and from there the style spread among the trading cities of the Aegean. The so-called Greek Dark Ages were considered to last from c. 1100 to 800 BC and include the phases from the Protogeometric period to the Middle Geometric I period, which Knodell (2021) calls Prehistoric Iron Age. The vases had various uses or purposes within Greek society, including, but not limited to, funerary vases and symposium vases.
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.
The Providence Painter is the conventional name given to a painter of the Attic red-figure style. He was active around 470 BC.
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 Tyrrhenian amphora is a specific shape of Attic black-figure neck amphora. Tyrrhenian amphorae were only produced during a short period, about 565 to 550 BC. They are ovoid in shape and bear striking decorations. The handle is usually decorated with a lotus-palmette cross or vegetal tendrils. It always terminates in a red-painted ridge. The vase body is painted with several friezes. The uppermost of these, on the shoulder, is usually especially notable. It often contains mythological scenes, but the first erotic motifs in Attic vase painting also occur here. Unique motifs include the sacrifice of Polyxena. Often, the figures are explained by added inscriptions. The other friezes, usually two to three in number, are often decorated with animals. At times, a frieze is replaced with a vegetal band.
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 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.
Vassallaggi is a Sicilian prehistoric Bronze Age archaeological site, located on the hill of the same name, which had a later flourishing after the 7th century BC as a phrourion (fortress). The site is located in the middle of the Salso river valley, at 704 m above sea level, near San Cataldo in the province of Caltanissetta, in a strategic location for communication between the southern coast of Sicily and the northern part of the island. It has a NE-SW orientation and stretches along in parallel with the SS 122 San Cataldo-Serradifalco.
The Kleophrades Panathenaic prize amphora is an Archaic period amphora by the Kleophrades Painter from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dating to c. 500 BCE, the amphora, filled with olive oil, was the prize for a victor in the Panathenaia games in Athens. This particular amphora is a neck amphora that stands at 63.5 centimetres (25.0 in) tall.
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