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Ancient Greek Pottery
| This piece is based on
the collection in the Metropolitan Museum, and authored by Curator Dietrich von Bothmer. |
| A masterpiece of potting and painting:
this is the Attic red-figured calyx heater that the Metropolitan Museum has recently
acquired. Made about 515 B.C., it is signed by the painter Euphronios and by the potter
Euxitheos. Surpassing in beauty and excellence any vase in the Museum's large collection,
it ranks in importance with the acknowledged masterpieces of Greek art. In the field of
painted Greek pottery, it may without exaggeration be considered the finest Greek vase
there is. The photgraphs demonstrate clearly and immediately why the heater has become the
keystone of the Museum's collection of Greek vases. Through its purchase our holdings in
this fascinating field have taken on a new significance: an important collection has risen
to one of distinction. Conversely, this newcomer would lose some of its meaning if it
could not be seen and studied in the proper context. |
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A work of art
whose impact is so direct may kindle interest in a field that is appreciated by only a
few. What distinguishes Greek vases from all other decorated pottery is that their
decoration, both in content and technique, rises above the level of ornamentation and
justifies the special term vase painting.
Painted Greek vases are known from the second millennium B.C. until almost the end of
the first century B.C., and pottery was produced from one end of the Greek world to the
other. In the beginning many local styles flourished, but by the middle of the sixth
century B.C. the vases of Attica and its capital Athens had exceeded in quantity and
quality those of their nearest rival Corinth, with whom they had been competing for the
lucrative foreign markets. This Attic supremacy was never surpassed and lasted for a
century and a half and survived many wars and political upheavals, until the disastrous
end of the Peloponnesian war in 404 B.C. robbed Athens of her profitable markets in the
West. After that Attic pottery went into a slow but steady decline, and no vases of any
note were painted after the middle of the fourth century B.C., though, as we shall see,
vase painting continued in other parts of the Greek world.
The earliest Greek vases are painted primarily with simple ornamental designs, and in
shape and decoration hardly differ from pottery produced in other parts of the world. To
be sure, some attempts at telling a story already appear in Mycenaean vases of the late
Bronze Age, although pure ornament is still the prevailing element and vases with human
subjects are a distinct minority. The chief attraction of Mycenaean ceramic decoration is
the exuberant designs taken from sea life, but by the very end of the second millennium a
complete aesthetic reversal sets in. The succeeding style is known as
"geometric" and, as the name implies, the strict, orderly patterns are drawn
with either a compass or a ruler. When human figures reappear, in the eighth century B.C.,
they are still subordinated to an overall design that is chiefly abstract. Yet these early
figural compositions already evidence discipline and force, and the extreme economy of
line and contour suggests a deliberate attempt to depict only essentials. It is with the
geometric figure style that Attic vases show their superiority for the first time.
The next phase of vase painting coincides with what is called the orientalizing period
of Greek art: contact with the Near East opened Greek eyes to the Orient with its long
tradition of floral ornaments, exotic beasts, and weird monsters. Much of the geometric
austerity is abandoned, as incredible plants luxuriate in ornamental bands or even become
part of the principal scene. In the drawing of the human figure, the strict silhouette of
the geometric age now gives way to outline drawings that look curiously unsubstantial,
since most of the available background is still filled with all manner of patterns. It is
during this orientalizing period, however, that a decisive innovation was made in Corinth:
the establishment of the black-figure technique. This meant a return to silhouettes, but
now enlivened and articulated with incised lines and two additional ceramic colors, red
and white. In the second half of the seventh century this technique spread to Athens,
where, from the very beginning, the skill demanded by the engraved lines encouraged
artists to develop personal styles. It is, therefore, from the late seventh century on
that style becomes the property of the artist instead of being merely a general fashion.
Not surprisingly, signatures now begin to appear, and even unsigned vases can be
attributed to individual painters with some assurance of accuracy. Although ornamental
friezes still appear, the emphasis on human figures now becomes the overriding principle
that is to govern vase painting for more than two centuries.
| Most of the scenes on geometric works
that portray human figures occur on vases used as grave monuments, and depict subjects
related to the burial: the lying in state with mourners or funeral processions (Figure 1
), for instance. But slowly other subjects are introduced that seem to be taken from the
rich world of mythology. To watch the development of the narrative is one of the most
rewarding studies of Greek vase painting. Most of the scenes represented are known to us
from Greek literature, especially the early epics, but the artists appear to have been
quite selective in what they show and how they tell a story. At no time do vases furnish
book illustrations in the modern sense, with a picture for each episode. In this
development of a narrative style, certain iconographic traditions are adhered to, but,
more and more, thanks to the creative spirit of the individual artists, the stories told
and scenes shown break with the time-honored formulae and introduce fresh aspects, novel
groupings, or even subjects not before depicted. |
Fig. 1 |
Fig. 6 |
The great masters of Attic black-figure
- Sophilos, Kleitias, Nearchos, Lydos, the Amasis Painter, and Exekias ( Figures 6, 7, 8,
9 ) not only manage to incorporate every artistic advance into their drawing of figures
and entire compositions, but they also succeed in endowing their scenes with something of
a personal experience. The gaiety and exuberance of a revel are strongly differentiated
from the grim scene on a battlefield, where the victors are easily distinguishable from
the vanquished. Then there are solemn processions of worshipers, and grieving mourners at
a bier. Among the heroes, Herakles becomes the favorite, perhaps because he was the most
human. Yet he, too, is shown with subtle variations: the tense protagonist in strenuous
labors differs from the relaxed hero who has been rewarded by immortality and Olympian
status. This growing emphasis on human interpretations as opposed to hieratic formalism is
one of the many accomplishments of the great black-figure painters. The limitations of
the black-figure technique, particularly the unrealistic color scheme, began to hinder
artists who strove for ever richer and more varied representations. About 530-525 B.C. a
new technique is introduced, which is called red-figure. Now the figures are left the
color of the clay (and hence turn red when the vase is fired ); details are indicated
either in a very fine line drawn in black glaze, which is slightly raised (and hence
called a relief line ), or in lines of varying thickness executed in diluted glaze, with a
tonal range from dark brown to translucent yellow. The dilute glaze is also at times
applied to limited areas as a solid wash.
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Fig. 7 |
Fig. 8 |
Fig. 9 |
The entire
background - the space between and around the figures - is now painted a lustrous black,
as if the system of illumination had been reversed. - Most black-figure scenes look like
sun-drenched open spaces in which figures are silhouetted, as if seen against the light.
Red-figure, by contrast, reproduces the principles of modern theatrical lighting, with
each performer bathed in his own spotlight. The immediate benefit for the spectator is
twofold: not only does the picture carry better over a greater distance, but the contour
of the vase itself is also less eroded by the decoration: the black of the background
merges with the portions of the vase that bear no figures. Thus the contour of the vase
and its rotundity are reestablished, with the proper stress on the profile or silhouette
of the vase.
The path of black-figure from its powerful though unsophisticated beginnings in the
late seventh century to its almost decadent daintiness a hundred years later is straight
and clear.
| Red-figure in its initial phase seems
brutally rustic by comparison, and its earliest practitioners, the Andokides Painter and
Oltos (Figures 11, 14 ), can hardly have been a serious challenge to the older, fully
developed technique. In early works by the Andokides Painter, for instance, the heavy
inner markings, not even consistently drawn in relief lines, are no match for the subtle
incisions of, say, the late Exekias. All of this, however, changes rapidly and
radically in the next generation, when a group of first-rate painters sets out to perfect
the new technique. This group, considered the pioneers, no longer translates black-figure
scenes into red-figure, as the Andokides Painter had been prone to do; instead, the old
subjects are treated in novel compositions, as if they had never been painted before, and
new subjects are introduced with a surety as if they had a long tradition behind them.
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Fig. 11 |
Fig. 14 |
It is in this
period, and within the circle of the pioneers, that the individual styles of the painters
can most readily be distinguished, and almost every one of their works is a masterpiece.
By a happy coincidence (if indeed it is merely a coincidence ), the greatest of the
pioneers are known to us by name. They are Euphronios (the painter of our newly acquired
calyx heater ), Euthymides, and Phintias. Each of the three goes his own way and can thus
be recognized, even though not all their works bear a signature. Each, by himself,
contributes a solid chapter to Attic vase painting, but it is clear that they looked at
each others' work and learned from one another. Taken together, they bring about a primavera
that painting did not see again until the Italian Renaissance.
Statistically speaking - and here we must make allowances for the fortuitous
circumstances of the survival of their works - not one of them painted for very long or in
great quantity, and just how they passed on the torch is not clear. At the height of their
artistic activity, several new shapes begin to make their appearance, and the pioneers
seem to have collaborated with the potters in laying out the scheme of decoration on them;
the specialized preferences for certain shapes that characterizes later generations of
vase painters is not yet apparent. Nor is there much, if any, repetition of subjects or,
for that matter, any limitation. Both the invisible world of the gods and the everyday
life of Athens and her inhabitants are drawn with equal love, and the heroes of the past
are shown with the features of the noblest contemporaries.
Fig. 17 |
The next phase of Attic red-figure opens
with the Berlin Painter and the Kleophrades Painter; all the technical achievements of the
pioneers are continued with ease and consistency, as if they had been taught for
generations. What is new now, apart from relatively minor anatomical refinements, are
novel decorative principles through which the heavy borders that had framed scenes are
lightened or altogether abandoned, and most compositions are reduced to just a few or even
single figures. The beginnings of this trend can be detected in late works by Euphronios,
but a perfect balance is not achieved until such figures as the Berlin Painter's ecstatic
kithara player (Figure 17), whose very contours seem to agree with the silhouette of the
vase. |
| At about this time the painters begin to
show preferences for certain shapes, with a resulting degree of specialization, so that a
distinction can be made between cup painters and pot painters. The Attic drinking cup
(kylix) has a long and distinguished history going back to the first quarter of the sixth
century B.C. Though the shape passed through a great many changes, the figure decoration
remained attached to the same areas: a tondo - or disk - on the inside and friezes on the
outside. The standard kylix afforded much freedom of decoration. Freedom and challenge for
the tondo, with its denial of verticals and horizontals, required a compositional skill
not readily mastered by every painter. The great cup painters of this period are Onesimos,
Makron, Douris, and the Brygos Painter (Figures 19, 20, 21 ), whose activities came to an
end shortly after the victory over the Persians in 479 B.C. With liberty and
independence established, Athens grew powerful and rich. In the arts we approach what is
justly called the classic period, culminating in the new buildings on the Acropolis. It is
at this time that wall and panel painting emerges from its obscure beginnings, and we hear
of masterpieces by Polygnotos and Mikon painted on panels for walls of buildings like the
Theseion and the Painted Porch.
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Fig. 19 |
Fig. 20 |
Fig. 21 |
Of these enormous
paintings not a scrap has been recovered, but we have guidebook descriptions of their
subjects and other scattered references to them. Neither literature nor vase painting
informs us about any comparable large-scale panel or wall paintings of the archaic period;
but, beginning in the second quarter of the fifth century, vase paintings suddenly include
new types of compositions and a curious preference for certain mythological subjects,
which must be attributed to outside influences. In the early classic period, many favorite
scenes begin to disappear, and more and more of the vase painters seem to be competing not
among themselves but with the famous painters of their day. As the archaic restraint gives
way to the greater freedom of the classic period, something is lost of that balance by
which shape and decoration were united: the new style brought with it an interest in
ambitious compositions and increased size that do not suit the vase as they do a panel or
a wall. The potting itself becomes increasingly poor - that is to say, less
inventive. Almost all the shapes that already existed continue, but they are now
"refined" to an elegance that often borders on affectation.
Great vase painters, however, still flourish for two generations, and many a vase in
the early classic and classic period is truly memorable. The most significant advance lies
in the treatment of moods and attitudes. The "noble simplicity and quiet
grandeur" with which Winckelmann characterized classic Greek art are introduced into
even the simplest groupings; each figure keeps a certain distance from the next and moves
or stands with an almost trained grace. Even scenes with satyrs and maenads become
unexpectedly quiet. Some of the finest vases of this period are no longer painted in the
red-figure technique, but employ a white slip on which the subjects are drawn in outline
with several additional ceramic colors for garments and accessories, as well as some
ever-so-sparse indications of landscape.
| White-ground and red-figure go side by
side, and while the Penthesilea Painter, for instance, is named after a monumental
red-figured cup in Munich, his white-ground pyxis with the Judgment of Paris (Figure 23 )
ranks securely among his masterpieces. In battle scenes, on the other hand, the big
paintings on the walls of the Theseion and the Painted Porch had introduced a technique of
suggesting depth by what is called cavalier perspective: since true perspective, as we
have known it since the Renaissance, had not yet been mastered, the figures, whether near
or far, were all shown of the same height but on different levels, with considerable
overlapping. Many a vase painter tried to translate this fashion into the much smaller
area of a vase, and it is thanks to these ambitious attempts that we can grasp something
of the overall effect of the lost wall paintings. One of the favorite subjects is the
battle between Athenians and Amazons (Figure 24): in an age that avoided direct political
propaganda, the legendary Athenian victory over a band of foreign invaders served as the
mythical precursor of the more recent victory of the Athenians over the Persians. In
keeping with the new interest in the prehistoric Athenian past, Attic heroes and their
exploits gradually displace heroes like Herakles, so popular in the sixth century B.C.
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The new freedom in
composition is paralleled by innovations in draughtsmanship: the human body is now shown
in every conceivable pose and position, with much foreshortening and with a great many
three-quarter views. Drapery folds lose their starched rigidity and hug the contours of
the body. There is also some shading to show the hollow of a fold, the convexity of a
shield, or the roundness of an object, but the figures remain evenly lit and cast no
shadows. Toward the end of the fifth century, added white suddenly reappears for the flesh
of women and small figures of Eros, and for numerous details. Gilding, which in the
archaic period had been used to represent exceptional objects like scepters or golden
libation bowls, now becomes commonplace. Women in all their occupations predominate and
are always shown as ladies, even when being abducted.
The Peloponnesian war, culminating in the defeat of Athens, all but stopped the
profitable export of Attic pottery to the West, and the void was filled by local schools
that arose in the Greek colonies of Southern Italy and Sicily. At first, these local
artists cling close to their Athenian models both for shapes and decoration. In the fourth
century, however, the gap widens, and the contacts, if any, become scarce. Much of South
Italian vase painting is rather summary in design and execution, but there were enough
talented painters with original ideas to create imposing works. Few of them, however, seem
to have succeeded in mastering the complex relationship of painting to vase, and even the
finest paintings suffer from being unrelated to the shape of the object they decorate.
Fig. 28 |
Red-figure had gone a long way, and all
the possibilities of its technique had been exhausted. But the glaze fired as black as
ever, and among the more pleasing vases are those that have figures - or only ornaments -
painted in opaque ceramic colors on the lustrous black ground (Figure 28). This technique,
called "Gnathian" after a town in Apulia, had been briefly fashionable in Athens
about 500 B.C., a counterpart, as it were, to the white-ground technique; how it reached
Southern Italy a hundred years later is not entirely clear, but as it was also practiced
in Etruria from the early fifth century on, it may have reached Apulia from Central Italy. |
| Toward the very end of the fourth and
the beginning of the third century, redfigure comes to a complete halt in all parts of the
ancient world, although blackfigure, or the simpler form of silhouette decoration, had
never entirely ceased and lingers on. In Sicily, the last phase of red-figure had seen the
addition of non-ceramic colors to the vases after firing; later in the third century B.C.,
red-figure, which even with added colors is essentially a ceramic technique, was
completely supplanted by pottery that was first fired and then painted. Now, for the first
time, we have the full palette of the painter, and these vases, of which one of the finest
is illustrated as Figure 29, curiously anticipate in their compositions and color scheme
many of the wall paintings of two hundred years later found in the cities and villages
buried by Mt. Vesuvius. |
Fig. 29 |
This is a sketch,
in barest outline, of the history of vase painting. Its long development, remarkable
continuity, and abundant survival make pottery the most important material in any study of
antiquity. Paintings on vases tell us more about the Greeks, what they looked like, what
they did, and what they believed in than any single literary text. Thus even a vase with
poor drawing oftentimes takes on a special significance because of a story told for the
first time, or a detail illuminated. A series of vase paintings of a given period is our
best evidence for its artistic taste, and a comprehensive collection of vases, like the
one in the Metropolitan Museum, becomes an encyclopedia opened simultaneously at all the
important places. The large number of masterpieces in the Museum guarantees that the
collection is not just an assembly of footnotes conveniently displayed, but that it
deepens our appreciation of Greek art. In this context the average does not take away from
the best; rather, like the broad base of a pyramid it directs the gaze to its summit and
supports it.
Each of the vases illustrated here, while typical of its time and artist, should serve
as a starting point toward that fuller exploration of the field that is rendered so easy
by the collection from which these representatives were chosen. Here the inquisitive
visitor will be rewarded beyond his expectations, as he discovers for himself the wealth
of material waiting for him. No doubt he will soon find his own favorites, but let this
brief survey and the following highlights act as a map on which some of the peaks and most
of the boundaries are indicated.
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