Everything about Greek Vase totally explained
Thanks to its hardy nature, pottery bulks large in the archaeological record of
Ancient Greece, and because we've so much of it (some 100,000 vases are recorded in the
Corpus vasorum antiquorum) it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society. Little survives, for example, of
ancient Greek painting except for what is found on the earthenware in everyday use, so we must trace the development of
Greek art through its vestiges on a derivative art form. Nevertheless the shards of pots discarded or buried in the first millennium BC are still the best guide we've to the customary life and mind of the
ancient Greeks.
Development of Vase Painting
Protogeometric Style
Vases of
protogeometrical period (c. 1050-900 BC.) represent the return of craft production after the collapse of the Mycenaean Palace culture and the ensuing
Greek dark ages. Indeed, it's 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. Yet by
1050 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, triangle, wavy lines and arcs, but placed with evident consideration and notable dexterity, probably aided by compass and multiple brush.
Attic production was the first to resume and influence the rest of
Greece, especially
Boeotia,
Corinth, the
Cyclades (in particular
Naxos) and the
Ionian colonies in the east
Aegean. The site of
Lefkandi is one of our most important sources of ceramics from this period where a cache of grave goods has been found giving evidence of a distinctive Euboian protogeometric which lasted into the early 8th century.
Geometric Style
Geometrical art flourished in the
9th and
8th centuries BC. It was characterized by new motifs, breaking with the iconography of the
Minoan and
Mycenaean periods: meanders, triangles and other geometrical decoration (from whence the name of the style) as distinct from the predominantly circular figures of the previous style. The best examples we've were grave goods, which often allows us to differentiate Attic, other mainland and island styles since we may assume they were produced in a batch for the sole purpose of burial. However our chronology comes from exported wares found in datable contexts overseas.
With the Early geometrical style (approximately 900-850 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. 850-770 BC), figurative decoration makes its appearance: they're initially identical bands of animals (horses, stags, goats, geese, etc) which alternate with the geometrical bands. 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 and won't 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: πρόθεσις /
prothesis (exposure and lamentation of dead) or ἐκφορά /
ekphora (transport of the coffin to the cemetery). The bodies are represented in a geometrical way except for the calves, which are rather protuberant. In the case of soldiers, a shield in form of a
Diabolo, called “Dipylon shield” because of its characteristic drawing, covers the central part of the body. 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: a confrontation between two warriors can be as well a
Homeric duel as a simple combat; a failed boat can represent the shipwreck of
Odysseus or any hapless sailor.
Lastly, we've the local schools that appear in
Greece. Production of vases was largely the prerogative of Athens - it's 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.
Orientalizing Style
The orientalizing style was the product of cultural ferment in the
Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean of the
7th century BC and
8th century BC. Fostered by trade links with the city-states of
Asian 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. The new idiom developed initially in
Corinth and later in
Athens between circa
725 BC to
625 BC. It was characterized by an expanded vocabulary of motifs: sphinx, griffin, lions, etc, as well as a repertory of non-mythological animals arranged in friezes across the belly of the vase. In these friezes the painter also from now on applies lotuses or palmettes. Depictions of humans were relatively rare; of these we most commonly find figures in silhouette with some incised detail, this was perhaps the origin of the incised silhouette figures of the black-figure period. There is sufficient detail on these figures to allow us to discern a number of different artist’s hands. Geometrical features remained in the style called proto-Corinthian that embraced these orientalizing experiments, yet which co-existed 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 protoattic, 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 the procession of chariots. However, they adopt the principle of line drawing to replace the silhouette. In the middle of
7th century BC there appears the black and white style: black figures on a white zone, accompanied by polychromy to render the color of the flesh or clothing. Clay used in
Athens was much more orange than that of
Corinth, and so didn't lend itself as easily to the representation of flesh.
Crete, and especially the islands of the
Cyclades, are characterized by their attraction to the vases known as “plastic”, for example whose paunch or collar is moulded in the shape of head of an animal or a man. 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's widespread over all of
Asia Minor, with centers of production at
Miletos and
Chios. 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.) fill the empty spaces.
Black Figure
The black-figure period coincides approximately with the era designated by
Winkelmann as the middle to late
Archaic, from c. 620 to 480 BC. The technique of incising silhouetted figures with enlivening detail which we now call the black-figure method was, as we saw, a Corinthian invention of the 7th century and spread from there to other city states and regions including
Sparta,
Boeotia,
Euboea, the east
Greek islands and most importantly
Athens.
The Corinthian fabric, extensively studied by HGG Payne and Darrell Amyx, 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.
It was to be at
Athens that black-figure would reach its full potential. It is at
Athens we first find the phenomenon of vase painters signing their work, the first known being a Dinos by
Sophilos (illus. below, BM c. 580), this perhaps indicative of their increasing ambition as artists in producing the monumental work demanded as grave markers, as for example with
Kleitias’s
François Vase. The finest work in the style belongs to
Exekias and the
Amasis Painter whose feeling for composition and narrative mark them out from the jobbing artisans of their contemporaries.
Circa
520 BC the red-figure technique was developed and was gradually introduced in the form of the
bilingual vase by those trailblazers the
Andokides Painter,
Oltos and
Psiax. Red-figure quickly eclipsed black-figure yet in the unique form of the Panathanaic Amphora black-figure continued to be utilised well into the 4th century BC.
Red Figure
The innovation of the red-figure technique was an
Athenian invention of the late 6th century, 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 20 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 Pioneers deserve particular note not just because they're significant artists in their own right (
Euphronios and
Euthymides especially) but because their shared values and goals 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 them “the reconstruction of their careers, common purpose, even rivalries, can be taken as an archaeological triumph”
The next generation of late
Archaic vase painters (ca. 500 to 480 BC.) brought an increasing naturalism to the style as seen in the gradual change of the profile eye. 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. 480 to 425 BC) a number of distinct schools had evolved. 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. By contrast the school of the Berlin Painter in the form of the
Achilles Painter and his peers (who may have been the Berlin Painter’s pupils) favoured a naturalistic pose usually of a single figure against a solid black background or of restrained
white-ground lekythoi. With the school of the
Niobid Painter we can include
Polygnotos and the
Kleophon Painter whose work indicates something of the influence of the
Parthenon sculptures both in theme (i.e Polygnotos’s centauromachy, Brussels, Musées Royaux A. & Hist., A 134) and in feeling for composition.
Towards the end of the century the so-called
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 (hair, jewellery, etc). The
Meidias Painter is usually most closely identified with this style.
Vase production in
Athens stopped around 330-320 BC possibly due to Alexander’s control of the city, and had been in slow decline over the 4th century along with the political fortunes of
Athens herself. However vase production continued in the 4th and 3rd centuries in the Greek colonies of southern Italy where five regional styles may be distinguished. These are the
Apulian,
Lucanian,
Sicilian,
Campanian and
Paestan. 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. Their work represents a late mannerist phase to the achievement of Greek vase painting.
White ground Technique
The White-ground Technique was developed at the end of the sixth century BC. Unlike the better-known black-figure and red-figure techniques, its coloration wasn't achieved through the application and firing of
slips but through the use of paints and gilding on a surface of white clay. It allowed for a higher level of polychromy than the other techniques, although the vases end up less visually striking. The technique gained great importance during the fifth and fourth centuries, especially in the form of small
lekythoi that became typical grave offerings. Important representatives include its inventor, the
Achilles Painter, as well as
Psiax, the
Pistoxenos Painter and the
Thanatos Painter.
Hellenistic Period
The
Hellenistic period (which we take to be roughly the late 4th century to the
1st century BC) is one of cultural decline in the traditional centres of Greek pottery production. Red-figure painting had died out in
Athens by the end of the
4th century BC to be replaced by what is known as West Slope ware, so named after the finds on the west slope of the
Athenian Acropolis. This latter style consisted of painting in a tan coloured slip and white paint on a black glaze background with some incised detailing, representations of people diminished with this idiom to be replaced with simpler motifs such as wreaths, dolphins, rosettes, etc. Variations of this style spread throughout the Greek world with notable centres in
Crete and
Apulia, where figural scenes continued to be in demand.
Manufacture
Material
Greece enjoys ample deposits of fine clay, in particular large quantities of good quality secondary clay. The clay beds around
Athens are distinctive for their chemical composition, mainly with respect to their iron oxide (Fe
2O
3) and calcium oxide (CaO) contents, which are responsible for the reddish-orange colour of the fired clay. This marks it out from the clays of other regions such as
Corinth where the pottery has a lighter, creamy-white appearance. Indeed spectroscopy and other methods has revealed unexpected connections amongst vases distributed around the
Mediterranean basin, as in the case of the hydriai from Hadra near
Alexandria. Previously thought to be
Egyptian in origin analysis of their chemical composition has shown them to have been imported from a workshop in Rhodes.
Primary clays were rarer and used sparingly mostly as an accessory colour in decoration, for example on
white ground vases where kaolinite was applied in a thin uniform layer while the pot was on the wheel. All clay was purified through levigation in order to remove such impurities as quartz and limestone in order to increase the malleability of the clay in the potter's hands.
Construction
Wheelmade pottery dates back to roughly 2500 BC where before the coil method of building the walls of the pot was employed. Most Greek vases were wheelmade, 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 (the handles on a volute crater for instance). More complex pieces were made in parts then assembled when it was leather hard by means of joining with a slip, whereupon the potter returned to the wheel for the final shaping, or turning. It was then glazed and incised ready for the
kiln.
Decoration and Firing
The striking black glaze 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 specially located illitic clay beds that produced spontaneous colloidal dispersion in rain water. The stability of the chemical composition of the Attic black glaze argues against the use of added deffloculants such as wood or other plant ashes, urea, tannins, even blood, suggested by several authors during the 20th cent. This clay suspension was thickhened by concentration to a paste and was used for the decoration of the surface of the vase. 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 single cycle. First, the kiln was heated to around 920-950°C, with all vents open bringing oxygen into the firing chamber and turning both pot and glaze a reddish-brown (oxidising conditions) due to the formation of
hematite (Fe
2O
3) in both the paint and the clay body. Then the vent was closed and green wood introduced, creating carbon monoxide which turns the red hematite to black
magnetite(Fe
3O
4); at this stage the temperature decreases due to incomplete combustion. In a final reoxidizing phase (at about 800-850 °C) the kiln was opened and oxygen reintroduced causing the unglazed reserved clay to go back to orange-red.
The glazed surface had been vitrified in the previous phase, 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 cent. onwards to the end of 20th cent, for example De Caylus (1752), Durand-Greville (1891), Binns and Fraser (1925), Schumann (1942), Winter (1959), Bimson (1956), Noble (1960, 1965), Hofmann (1962), Oberlies (1968), Pavicevic (1974), Aloupi (1993).
Inscriptions
Inscriptions on Greek pottery are of two kinds; the incised (graffito) the earliest of which are contemporary with the beginnings of the Greek alphabet in the
8th century BC, and the painted (dipinto), which only begin to appear a century later. Both forms are relatively common on painted vases until the
Hellenistic period when the practice of inscribing pots seems to die out. They are by far most frequently found on Attic pottery where approximately one in ten (some 8,000 to 10,000) bears a legend.
A number of sub-classes of inscription can be distinguished. Potters and painters occasionally signed their works with
epoiesen and
egraphsen respectively. Trademarks are found from the start of the 6th century on Corinthian pieces; these may have belonged to an exporting merchant rather than the pottery workshop (as with much of the rest of the study in this field this remains a matter of conjecture.) Patron’s names are also sometimes recorded, as are the names of characters and objects depicted. At times we may find a snatch of dialogue to accompany a scene, as in ‘Dysniketos’s horse has won’, announces a herald on a Panathenaic amphora (BM, B 144). More puzzling, however, are the
kalos and kalee inscriptions, which might have formed part of courtship ritual in Athenian high society, yet are found on a wide variety of vases not necessarily associated with a social setting. Finally there are
abecedaria and nonsense inscriptions, though these are largely confined to black-figure pots.
Some of the leading vase painters of
Athens, such as the
Pioneer Group, seem to have revelled in adding text to their vases and it's a testament to their literacy and cultural daring that they did so. Undoubtedly it places them in a class apart from other ancient Greek artisans.
Rediscovery and Scholarship
Interest in Greek art lagged behind the revival of classical scholarship during the Renaissance and revived in the academic circle round
Nicholas Poussin in
Rome in the
1630s. Though modest collections of vases recovered from ancient tombs in Italy were made in the 15th and 16th centuries these were regarded as
Etruscan. It is possible that
Lorenzo de Medici bought several
Attic vases directly from
Greece; however the connection between them and the examples excavated in central
Italy wasn't made until much later.
Winckelmann's
'Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums of 1764 first refuted the Etruscan origin of what we now know to be Greek pottery yet Sir William Hamilton's two collections, one lost at sea the other now in the British Museum, were still published as "Etruscan vases"; it would take until 1837 with Stackelberg's Gräber der Hellenen to conclusively end the controversy.
Much of the early study of Greek vases took the form of production of albums of the images they depict, however neither
D'Hancarville's nor
Tischbein's folios record the shapes or attempt to supply a date and are therefore unreliable as an archaeological record. Serious attempts at scholary study made steady progress over the
19th century starting with the founding of the
Instituto di Corrispondenza in Rome in
1828 (later the German Archaeological Institute), followed by
Eduard Gerhard's pioneering study
Auserlesene Griechische Vasenbilder (1840 to 1858), the establishment of the journal
Archaeologische Zeitung in 1843 and the
Ecole d'Athens 1846. It was Gerhard who first outlined the chronology we now use, namely: Orientalizing (Geometric, Archaic), Black Figure, Red Figure, Polychromatic (Hellenistic). Finally it was
Otto Jahn's 1854 catalogue
Vasensammlung of the Pinakothek, Munich, that set the standard for the scientific description of Greek pottery, recording the shapes and inscriptions with a previously unseen fastidousness. Jahn's study was the standard textbook on the history and chronology of Greek pottery for many years, yet in common with Gerhard he dated the introduction of the red figure technique to a century later than was in fact the case. This error was corrected when the
Aρχαιολογικη 'Εταιρεια undertook the excavation of the Acropolis in 1885 and discovered the so-called "
Persian debris" of red figure pots destroyed by
Persian invaders in
480 BC. With a more soundly established chronology it was possible for
Adolf Furtwängler and his students in the 1880s and 90s to date the strata of his archaeological digs by the nature of the pottery found within them, a method of
seriation Flinders Petrie was later to apply to unpainted Egyptian pottery.
Where the 19th century was a period of discovery and the laying out of first principles the 20th century has been one of consolidation and intellectual industry. Efforts to record and publish the totality of public collections of vases began with the creation of the Corpus vasorum antiquorum under
Edmond Pottier and the Beazley archive. It is to
John Beazley's comprehensive studies
Attic Red-Figure Vase Painters 1942 and
Attic Black-Figure Vase Painters 1956 we owe the naming of dozens of previously forgotten artists by
Morellian stylistic analysis. Similarly
Arthur Dale Trendall and
Humfrey Payne along with
Darrell A. Amyx supplied the chronology to the otherwise neglected Apulian and Corinthian schools.
Uses and Types of Ancient Greek pottery
Not all ancient Greek vases were purely utilitarian; large
Geometric amphorae were used as grave markers,
kraters in
Apulia served as tomb offerings and
Panathenaic Amphorae seem to have been looked on partly as
objets d’art . Most other surviving pottery, however, had a practical purpose which determined its shape. The names we use for
Greek vase shapes are often a matter of convention rather than historical fact, a few do illustrate their own use or are labeled with their original names, others are the result of early archaeologists attempt to reconcile the physical object with a known name from Greek literature – not always successfully.
To understand the relationship between form and function Greek pottery may be divided in four broad categories:
- storage and transport vessels,
- mixing vessels,
- jugs and cups and
- vases for oils, perfumes and cosmetics.
Within each category the forms are roughly the same in scale and whether open or closed, where there's uncertainty we can make good proximate guesses of what use a piece would have served. 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 example have a concealed second cup inside them to give the impression of being full of oil, as such they'd have served no other useful gain.
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. An idea of the extent of this trade can be gleaned from plotting the find maps of these vases outside of Greece, though this couldn't account for gifts or immigration. 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.
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