White-ground technique is a style of white ancient Greek pottery and the painting in which figures appear on a white background. It developed in the region of Attica, dated to about 500 BC. It was especially associated with vases made for ritual and funerary use, if only because the painted surface was more fragile than in the other main techniques of black-figure and red-figure vase painting. Nevertheless, a wide range of subjects are depicted.
In white-ground pottery, the vase is covered with a light or white slip of kaolinite. A similar slip had been used as carrier for vase paintings in the Geometric and Archaic periods. White-ground vases were produced, for example, in Ionia, Laconia and on the Cycladic islands, but only in Athens did it develop into a veritable separate style beside black-figure and red-figure vase painting. For that reason, the term "white-ground pottery" or "white-ground vase painting" is usually used in reference to the Attic material only.
The light slip was probably meant to make the vases appear more valuable, perhaps by eliciting associations with ivory or marble. However, in no case was a vessel's entire surface covered in white slip. It has also been conjectured [2] that this form of painting emerged in order to emulate the more prestigious medium of wall painting, but the thesis has been elusive of proof. Furthermore, the group of five Huge Lekythoi (c. 70–100 cm high) are covered entirely in white slip, which suggests an imitation of marble lekythoi for funerary purposes. [3]
White-ground vase painting often occurred in association with red-figure vase painting. Especially typical of this are kylikes with a white-ground interior and a red-figure exterior image. White-ground painting is less durable than black- or red-figure, which is why such vases were primarily used as votives and grave vessels.
The development of white-ground vase painting took place parallel to that of the black- and red-figure styles. In the course of that development, five sub-styles can be noted:
Early use. The earliest surviving example of the technique is a fragmentary kantharos signed by the potter-painter Nearchos c. 570 BC . It was found on the Athenian Acropolis (Akropolis 611). [4] The technique was used to create strobing bands of colour that emphasize the shape of the vase. [5] and is associated with the workshops of Andokides, Nikosthenes and Psiax. [6]
Type I. The use of a white ground in conjunction with outline painting did not develop until some fifty years later, when black-figure vase painting on white ground was probably introduced by the potter Nikosthenes around 530/525 BC. After a short interval, this technique was also adopted by other workshops, including that of Psiax. [7] The manner of painting is the same as in conventional black-figure, the colour of the grounding being the only difference. The ground is rarely pure white, but usually slightly yellowish or light beige.
Type II. A second form is monochrome silhouette drawing. Images are not created from reservation (paint-free areas) and painted internal detail (as in red-figure vase painting), but from drawn outlines and painted internal detail. This style is used since the end of the 6th century BC, especially on cups, alabastra and lekythoi . Initially, the outline of the figures is executed in the form of a relief line, but from about 500 BC, this is increasingly replaced by painted yellowish-brown lines. The so-called "semi-outline" technique is a combination of the first and the second technique, used only in the first half of the 5th century BC, virtually exclusively on lekythoi and alabastra.
Type III. In the first quarter of the 5th century, the workshop of the potter Euphronios develops a four-colour painting style using a combination of shiny clay slip and mineral paints. The images are made up of outline drawings in shiny slip and coloured areas in mineral paint. This style is used especially on pyxides and cups. Some details, such as fruit, jewellery, weaponry or vessels can be executed in clay slip in such a fashion as to attain a slight plasticity, additionally they may be gilded. The paints used are limited to tones of red and brown, yellow, white and black.
Type IV. Early Classical lekythos painting combined shiny slip, mineral paints and non.ceramic mineral paints, This type developed in the second quarter of the 5th century BC. It was used in painting large grave lekythoi used in funerary cult. The images are mostly constructed of coloured areas. Pure outline drawing is only used for the depiction of male bodies at this stage. Female bodies are rendered in white paint, clothing in black shiny slip, mineral paints and occasionally non-ceramic paints such as cinnabarite or Egyptian blue. Many images depict scenes from women's life (the gynaikion ). Grave images are rare. The most important representative of this style is the Achilles Painter. [8]
Type V. The fifth style was polychrome lekythos painting. It replaced Early Classical lekythos painting around the middle of the 5th century BC. By this time, white-ground can be identified most closely with three principal shapes: the lekythos , the krater, and cups. [9] Black shiny slip and white paint now disappeared from the paintings. Female bodies were again rendered as simple outline drawings. Non-ceramic mineral paints also ceased to be used. At the same time, several painters, starting with the Sabouroff Painter, began to use red or blackish-grey matt paints, instead of shiny slip, for the contours. Only the contours are painted before firing, other paints are applied afterwards. Therefore, the durability of such vase paintings is very limited; many examples are badly preserved or completely worn. As a result, it is difficult to assess the depicted motifs. Grave scenes are predominant.
Important Classical white-ground painters (5th century BC), in addition to the Achilleus Painter and Sabouroff Painter, include the Sappho Painter, Thanatos Painter, Bird Painter, Square Painter, Women Painter, Phiale Painter, as well as several representatives of Group R (Reed Group), including its eponymous Reed Painter. By the end of the century, some first attempts at shaded painting can be observed, influenced probably by contemporaneous panel painting. Notable in this regard is the Group of the Huge Lekythoi, specialised in decorating large grave vessels. During the second half of the 5th century, white-ground vase painting was used nearly exclusively for grave lekythoi. When that vase type went out of use around 400 BC, white-ground vase painting also ceased.
Later, during the Hellenistic period, various types of white-ground pottery occur in several locations of the Greek World, sometimes painted monochrome, sometimes polychrome. They include Hâdra vases, Canosa vases and vases of the Centuripe type. Lagynoi were often decorated in white-ground technique.
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 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.
A lekythos is a type of ancient Greek vessel used for storing oil, especially olive oil. It has a narrow body and one handle attached to the neck of the vessel, and is thus a narrow type of jug, with no pouring lip; the oinochoe is more like a modern jug. In the "shoulder" and "cylindrical" types which became the most common, especially the latter, the sides of the body are usually vertical by the shoulder, and there is then a sharp change of direction as the neck curves in; the base and lip are normally prominent and flared. However, there are a number of varieties, and the word seems to have been used even more widely in ancient times than by modern archeologists. They are normally in pottery, but there are also carved stone examples.
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 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 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.
The Pan Painter was an ancient Greek vase-painter of the Attic red-figure style, probably active c. 480 to 450 BC. John Beazley attributed over 150 vases to his hand in 1912:
Cunning composition; rapid motion; quick deft draughtsmanship; strong and peculiar stylisation; a deliberate archaism, retaining old forms, but refining, refreshing, and galvanizing them; nothing noble or majestic, but grace, humour, vivacity, originality, and dramatic force: these are the qualities which mark the Boston krater, and which characterize the anonymous artist who, for the sake of convenience, may be called the 'master of the Boston Pan-vase', or, more briefly, 'the Pan-master'.
The Eretria Painter was an ancient Greek Attic red-figure vase painter. He worked in the final quarter of the 5th century BC. The Eretria Painter is assumed to have been a contemporary of the Shuvalov Painter; he is considered one of the most interesting painters of his time. Many of his best works are painted on oinochoai and belly lekythoi. His paintings often depict many figures, moving in groups across all available surfaces. He also painted such vessels as figure-shaped vases or head-shaped kantharoi. Even as the vase shapes he painted on are unusual, his themes are conventional: athletes, satyrs and maenads, and mythological scenes. There are also some careful studies of women. He also painted white-ground vases. A lekythos in New York shows a funeral scene, typical of white-ground painting: Achilles is mourning Patroclus; the nereids bring him new weapons. The Eretria Painter's drawing style influenced later artists, e.g. the Meidias Painter and his school.
The Athena Painter was an Attic black-figure vase painter, active about 490 to 460 BC. His speciality were white-ground lekythoi painted in the black-figure style.
The Reed Painter is an anonymous Greek vase painter of white-ground lekythoi, a type of vessel for containing oil often left as grave offerings. Works are attributed to either the "Reed Painter" or his atelier.
Boeotian vase painting was a regional style of ancient Greek vase painting. Since the Geometric period, and up to the 4th century BC, the region of Boeotia produced vases with ornamental and figural painted decoration, usually of lesser quality than the vase paintings from other areas.
Euboean vase painting was a regional style of ancient Greek vase painting, prevalent on the island of Euboea.
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.
Three-phase firing or iron reduction technique is a firing technique used in ancient Greek pottery production, specifically for painted vases. Already vessels from the Bronze Age feature the colouring typical of the technique, with yellow, orange or red clay and brown or red decoration. By the 7th century BC, the process was perfected in mainland Greece enabling the production of extremely shiny black-slipped surfaces, which led to the development of the black-figure and red-figure techniques, which dominated Greek vase painting until about 300 BC.
The Thanatos Painter was an Athenian Ancient Greek vase painter who painted scenes of death on white-ground cylindrical lekythoi. All of the Thanatos Painter's found lekythoi have scenes of or related to death on them, including the eponymous god of death Thanatos carrying away dead bodies.