Greek Painted Pottery

Pottery of ancient Greece

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Or, the vase known as a hydria was used for collecting, carrying, and pouring water. It features a bulbous body, a pinched spout, and three handles two at the sides for holding and one stretched along the back for tilting and pouring. In order to discuss the different zones of vessels, specialists have adopted terms that relate to the parts of the body. The opening of the pot is called the mouth; the stem is referred to as the neck; the slope from the neck to the body is called the shoulder; and the base is known as the foot.

On the exterior, Greek vases exhibit painted compositions that often reflect the style of a certain period. For example, the vessels created during the Geometric Period c. Later, during the Archaic and Classical Periods c. These figural scenes can vary widely, from daily life events e. While it is important to stress that such painted scenes should not be thought of as photographs that document reality, they can still aid in reconstructing the lives and beliefs of the ancient Greeks.

Dipylon Amphora , c.

Techniques, Painters and Inscriptions. Not only did the pots have to be stacked in the kiln in a specific manner, but the conditions inside had to be precise. At this point, the entire vase turned red in color. Finally, in the last stage, the vents were reopened and oxidizing conditions returned inside the kiln. At this point, the unpainted zones of the vessel became red again while the vitrified slip the painted areas retained a glossy black hue. Through the introduction and removal of oxygen in the kiln and, simultaneously, the increase and decrease in temperature, the slip transformed into a glossy black color.

Briefly, ancient Greek vases display several painting techniques, and these are often period specific. During the Geometric and Orientalizing periods B. Frieze with mourning figures detail , Dipylon Amphora, c. Frieze with mourning figures detail , Dipylon Amphora , c.

Greek pottery

Originating in Corinth almost a century earlier, black-figure uses the silhouette manner in conjunction with added color and incision. Incision involves the removal of slip with a sharp instrument, and perhaps its most masterful application can be found on an amphora by Exekias below. Often described as Achilles and Ajax playing a game, the seated warriors lean towards the center of the scene and are clothed in garments that feature intricate incised patterning.

In addition to displaying more realistically defined figures, black-figure painters took care to differentiate gender with color: Exekias potter and painter , Attic black-figure amphora detail showing Ajax and Achilles playing a game , c. The red-figure technique was invented in Athens around BCE and is the inverse of black-figure below.

Here light-colored figures are set against a dark background. Using added color and a brush to paint in details, red-figure painters watered down or thickened the slip in order to create different effects. Some have a purely ritual function, for example white ground lekythoi contained the oil used as funerary offerings and appear to have been made solely with that object in mind. Many examples have a concealed second cup inside them to give the impression of being full of oil, as such they would have served no other useful gain.

Some vessels were designed as grave markers. There was an international market for Greek pottery since the 8th century BC, which Athens and Corinth dominated down to the end of the 4th century BC. Only the existence of a second hand market could account for the number of panathenaics found in Etruscan tombs. South Italian wares came to dominate the export trade in the Western Mediterranean as Athens declined in political importance during the Hellenistic period.

The process of making a pot and firing it is fairly simple. The first thing a potter needs is clay. Attica's high-iron clay gave its pots an orange color.

When clay is first dug out of the ground it is full of rocks and shells and other useless items that need to be removed. To do this the potter mixes the clay with water and lets all the impurities sink to the bottom. This is called levigation or elutriation.

This process can be done many times. The more times this is done, the smoother clay becomes. The clay is then kneaded by the potter and placed on a wheel. Once the clay is on the wheel the potter can shape it into any of the many shapes shown below, or anything else he desires.

Ancient Greek vases

Wheel made pottery dates back to roughly BC where before the coil method of building the walls of the pot was employed. Most Greek vases were wheel-made, though as with the Rhyton mould-made pieces so-called "plastic" pieces are also found and decorative elements either hand formed or by mould were added to thrown pots.

More complex pieces were made in parts then assembled when it was leather hard by means of joining with a slip, where the potter returned to the wheel for the final shaping, or turning. Sometimes, a young man helped turn the wheel. The pots were usually made in sections such as the body and feet and spout. Even the body, if it were larger than 20 centimeters, might be made in separate sections and glued together later with a thin watery clay called slip.

After the pot is made then the potter paints it with a very pure black slip made from a specially prepared clay [15] using brushes made from a single hair. Previously it was believed that Greek pottery, unlike today's pottery, was only fired once, but that firing had three stages. New studies instead provide material evidence that the pottery was made with two or more separate firings [17] in which the pottery is subjected to multiple firing stages.

This turns the pottery and the paint red all over. This turns the pottery and the paint all black. The potter then starts the third and final phase by opening the vents and allowing the kiln to cool all the way down. This last phase leaves the slip black but turns the pottery back to red. Thus, the slipped area stays black while the bare areas stay red. While the description of a single firing with three stages may seem economical and efficient, it is equally possible that each of these stages was confined to separate firings.

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The striking black slip with a metallic sheen, so characteristic of Greek pottery, was a fine suspension colloidal fraction of an illitic clay with very low calcium oxide content which was rich in iron oxides and hydroxides, differentiating from that used for the body of the vase in terms of the calcium content, the exact mineral composition and the particle size. This clay suspension was most probably collected in situ from illitic clay beds and was then processed through levigation. To aid in the levigation step, it is likely that the Attic black slip was treated with deflocculants as indicated by trace levels of contaminants to the clay, such as Zn associated with vitriol.

The paint was applied on the areas intended to become black after firing. The black color effect was achieved by means of changing the amount of oxygen present during firing. This was done in a process known as three-phase firing and was likely accomplished with multiple firings of the pottery. Then the vent was closed and green wood introduced, creating carbon monoxide which turns the red hematite to black magnetite Fe 3 O 4 ; at this stage the temperature decreases due to incomplete combustion.

In the previous phase, chemical composition of the slipped surface had been altered, so it could no longer be oxidized and remained black. The technique which is mostly known as the "iron reduction technique" was decoded with the contribution of scholars, ceramists and scientists since the mid 18th century onwards to the end of the 20th century, i.

The most familiar aspect of ancient Greek pottery is painted vessels of fine quality. These were not the everyday pottery used by most people but were sufficiently cheap to be accessible to a wide range of the population. Few examples of ancient Greek painting have survived so modern scholars have to trace the development of ancient Greek art partly through ancient Greek vase-painting, which survives in large quantities and is also, with Ancient Greek literature , the best guide we have to the customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks.

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Fine painting on Greek pottery goes back to the Minoan pottery and Mycenaean pottery of the Bronze Age , some later examples of which show the ambitious figurative painting that was to become highly developed and typical. After many centuries dominated by styles of geometric decoration, becoming increasingly complex, figurative elements returned in force in the 8th century. From the late 7th century to about BC evolving styles of figure-led painting were at their peak of production and quality and were widely exported.

During the Greek Dark Age , spanning the 11th to 8th centuries BC, the prevalent early style was that of the protogeometric art , predominantly utilizing circular and wavy decorative patterns. This was succeeded in mainland Greece , the Aegean , Anatolia , and Italy by the style of pottery known as geometric art , which employed neat rows of geometric shapes. The period of Archaic Greece , beginning in the 8th century BC and lasting until the late 5th century BC, saw the birth of Orientalizing period , led largely by ancient Corinth , where the previous stick-figures of the geometric pottery become fleshed out amid motifs that replaced the geometric patterns.

Classical ceramic decor is dominated mostly by Attic vase painting. Attic production was the first to resume after the Greek Dark Age and influenced the rest of Greece, especially Boeotia , Corinth , the Cyclades in particular Naxos and the Ionian colonies in the east Aegean. By the end of the Archaic period the styles of black-figure pottery , red-figure pottery and the white ground technique had become fully established and would continue in use during the era of Classical Greece , from the early 5th to late 4th centuries BC.

Corinth was eclipsed by Athenian trends since Athens was the progenitor of both the red-figure and white ground styles. Vases of the protogeometrical period c. It is one of the few modes of artistic expression besides jewelry in this period since the sculpture, monumental architecture and mural painting of this era are unknown to us. By BC life in the Greek peninsula seems to have become sufficiently settled to allow a marked improvement in the production of earthenware.

The style is confined to the rendering of circles, triangles, wavy lines and arcs, but placed with evident consideration and notable dexterity, probably aided by compass' and multiple brushes. Geometric art flourished in the 9th and 8th centuries BC. It was characterized by new motifs, breaking with the representation of the Minoan and Mycenaean periods: However, our chronology for this new art form comes from exported wares found in datable contexts overseas.

With the early geometrical style approximately — BC one finds only abstract motifs, in what is called the "Black Dipylon" style, which is characterized by an extensive use of black varnish, with the Middle Geometrical approx. In parallel, the decoration becomes complicated and becomes increasingly ornate; the painter feels reluctant to leave empty spaces and fills them with meanders or swastikas. This phase is named horror vacui fear of the empty and will not cease until the end of geometrical period. In the middle of the century there begin to appear human figures, the best known representations of which are those of the vases found in Dipylon , one of the cemeteries of Athens.

The fragments of these large funerary vases show mainly processions of chariots or warriors or of the funerary scenes: The bodies are represented in a geometrical way except for the calves, which are rather protuberant. The legs and the necks of the horses, the wheels of the chariots are represented one beside the other without perspective. The hand of this painter, so called in the absence of signature, is the Dipylon Master , could be identified on several pieces, in particular monumental amphorae.

At the end of the period there appear representations of mythology, probably at the moment when Homer codifies the traditions of Trojan cycle in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Here however the interpretation constitutes a risk for the modern observer: Lastly, are the local schools that appear in Greece. Production of vases was largely the prerogative of Athens — it is well attested that as in the proto-geometrical period, in Corinth , Boeotia , Argos , Crete and Cyclades , the painters and potters were satisfied to follow the Attic style.

From about the 8th century BC on, they created their own styles, Argos specializing in the figurative scenes, Crete remaining attached to a more strict abstraction. The orientalizing style was the product of cultural ferment in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean of the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Fostered by trade links with the city-states of Asia Minor , the artifacts of the East influenced a highly stylized yet recognizable representational art.

Ivories, pottery and metalwork from the Neo-Hittite principalities of northern Syria and Phoenicia found their way to Greece, as did goods from Anatolian Urartu and Phrygia , yet there was little contact with the cultural centers of Egypt or Assyria. It was characterized by an expanded vocabulary of motifs: In these friezes, painters also began to apply lotuses or palmettes. Depictions of humans were relatively rare. Those that have been found are figures in silhouette with some incised detail, perhaps the origin of the incised silhouette figures of the black-figure period.

There is sufficient detail on these figures to allow scholars to discern a number of different artists' hands. Geometrical features remained in the style called proto-Corinthian that embraced these orientalizing experiments, yet which coexisted with a conservative sub-geometric style.

The ceramics of Corinth were exported all over Greece, and their technique arrived in Athens, prompting the development of a less markedly Eastern idiom there. During this time described as Proto-Attic, the orientalizing motifs appear but the features remain not very realistic.

The painters show a preference for the typical scenes of the Geometrical Period, like processions of chariots. However, they adopt the principle of line drawing to replace the silhouette. In the middle of the 7th century BC, there appears the black and white style: Clay used in Athens was much more orange than that of Corinth, and so did not lend itself as easily to the representation of flesh.

At Aegina , the most popular form of the plastic vase is the head of the griffin. The Melanesian amphoras, manufactured at Paros , exhibit little knowledge of Corinthian developments. They present a marked taste for the epic composition and a horror vacui, which is expressed in an abundance of swastikas and meanders.

Finally one can identify the last major style of the period, that of Wild Goat Style , allotted traditionally to Rhodes because of an important discovery within the necropolis of Kameiros. In fact, it is widespread over all of Asia Minor , with centers of production at Miletos and Chios.

Painting on pottery

Two forms prevail oenochoes , which copied bronze models, and dishes, with or without feet. The decoration is organized in superimposed registers in which stylized animals, in particular of feral goats from whence the name pursue each other in friezes. Many decorative motifs floral triangles, swastikas, etc. Black-figure is the most commonly imagined when one thinks about Greek pottery. It was a popular style in ancient Greece for many years.

The black-figure period coincides approximately with the era designated by Winckelmann as the middle to late Archaic , from c. The technique of incising silhouetted figures with enlivening detail which we now call the black-figure method was a Corinthian invention of the 7th century [27] and spread from there to other city states and regions including Sparta , [28] Boeotia , [29] Euboea , [30] the east Greek islands [31] and Athens. The Corinthian fabric, extensively studied by Humfry Payne [32] and Darrell Amyx, [33] can be traced though the parallel treatment of animal and human figures.

The animal motifs have greater prominence on the vase and show the greatest experimentation in the early phase of Corinthian black-figure. As Corinthian artists gained in confidence in their rendering of the human figure the animal frieze declined in size relative to the human scene during the middle to late phase. By the mid-6th century BC, the quality of Corinthian ware had fallen away significantly to the extent that some Corinthian potters would disguise their pots with a red slip in imitation of superior Athenian ware. At Athens researchers have found the earliest known examples of vase painters signing their work, the first being a dinos by Sophilos illus.

Many scholars consider the finest work in the style to belong Exekias and the Amasis Painter , who are noted for their feeling for composition and narrative. Circa BC the red-figure technique was developed and was gradually introduced in the form of the bilingual vase by the Andokides Painter , Oltos and Psiax. The innovation of the red-figure technique was an Athenian invention of the late 6th century. It was quite the opposite of black-figure which had a red background. The ability to render detail by direct painting rather than incision offered new expressive possibilities to artists such as three-quarter profiles, greater anatomical detail and the representation of perspective.

The first generation of red-figure painters worked in both red- and black-figure as well as other methods including Six's technique and white-ground ; the latter was developed at the same time as red-figure. However, within twenty years, experimentation had given way to specialization as seen in the vases of the Pioneer Group , whose figural work was exclusively in red-figure, though they retained the use of black-figure for some early floral ornamentation.

The shared values and goals of The Pioneers such as Euphronios and Euthymides signal that they were something approaching a self-conscious movement, though they left behind no testament other than their own work. John Boardman said of the research on their work that "the reconstruction of their careers, common purpose, even rivalries, can be taken as an archaeological triumph" [35]. The next generation of late Archaic vase painters c.

This phase also sees the specialization of painters into pot and cup painters, with the Berlin and Kleophrades Painters notable in the former category and Douris and Onesimos in the latter. By the early to high classical era of red-figure painting c. The mannerists associated with the workshop of Myson and exemplified by the Pan Painter hold to the archaic features of stiff drapery and awkward poses and combine that with exaggerated gestures.

Polygnotos and the Kleophon Painter can be included in the school of the Niobid Painter , as their work indicates something of the influence of the Parthenon sculptures both in theme e. Toward the end of the century, the "Rich" style of Attic sculpture as seen in the Nike Balustrade is reflected in contemporary vase painting with an ever-greater attention to incidental detail, such as hair and jewellery.

The Meidias Painter is usually most closely identified with this style. Vase production in Athens stopped around — BC possibly due to Alexander the Great 's control of the city, and had been in slow decline over the 4th century along with the political fortunes of Athens itself. However, vase production continued in the 4th and 3rd centuries in the Greek colonies of southern Italy where five regional styles may be distinguished. Red-figure work flourished there with the distinctive addition of polychromatic painting and in the case of the Black Sea colony of Panticapeum the gilded work of the Kerch Style.

Several noteworthy artists' work comes down to us including the Darius Painter and the Underworld Painter , both active in the late 4th century, whose crowded polychromatic scenes often essay a complexity of emotion not attempted by earlier painters.

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