Session EAA Budapest As Far as Vases Go (original) (raw)
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Until a few decades ago attic red-figure pottery of the second half of the fourth century BC was not highly esteemed by most scholars. Although the iconographic repertoire of this period is rather limited and the quality of the painting is poorer than that of the fifth century, worth noting is the fact that red-figure vases were produced in great quantities and were exported throughout the Mediterranean, from the Black Sea to the coasts of Spain and Portugal. In this paper some late attic workshops and painters that produced red-figure pottery, such as the Otchët Group, the Painter of Agora P 17562, the Group of the Vienna Lekanis, the Painter of the Reading Lekanis, the Painter of Ferrara T.408, the Group G and the Amazon Painter, are going to be examined. Although many of the above mentioned workshops have been dated in the second quarter of the fourth century BC, new excavation data allow us to lower their dating and certainly their period of use within the third quarter of the fourth century BC and even the early Hellenistic period. Two areas of interest where late attic red-figure vases were exported in great numbers are going to be examined, Macedonia and the Black Sea area. In these areas the same attic workshops, vase-shapes and iconographic themes appear. Furthermore, the mass import of attic red-figure pottery lead to the birth of local workshops that imitated their attic prototypes to a great extent. From the find spots of red-figure pottery interesting remarks regarding trade in antiquity can be made, as well as the impact of attic pottery on local populations over a large geographical area in the transition between the Classical and the Hellenistic period.
Trendall’s studies allow us today to have a sufficient knowledge about the Sicilian red-figure vase painting of V and IV B.C. However some critical questions are still open. The aim of this article is focus attention on two very important stages of the Sicilian production: the beginning and the end. The problem of the origin, recently lively debated, is between the hypothesis of Trendall, based on the date of the 415-413 B.C. and on the reconstruction of the Syracusan workshop of the Chequer Painter (like a protos euretes of Sicilian red-figure vase painting), and a more complex production reality that gives strength to the idea of a plurality of modes of production – both in terms of languages, times and areas of production – at the first appearance of the phenomenon of vase painting in Sicily. Serious chronological problems also weigh on the final phase of Sicilian vase painting (the end of IV B.C., according to Trendall, or the middle of next century, according to Bernabò Brea and Madeleine Cavalier). But that’s not all. In fact, scholars rarely questioned about the reasons of the end of the Sicilian red-figure, while the new model of production of this final stage, the new subjects on vases, the increasing rarity of large-scale vessels and, finally, the same cessation of the red-figure vases may be associated with the new social and political reality of the island at that time.
In this article various aspects of red-figure pottery trade from the late 6th until the late 4th century BC within the boundaries of the Macedonian kingdom and beyond its northern borders are discussed. An overview of the red-figure pottery is presented according to modern-day archaeological research and bibliography. This overview includes the examination of red-figure vase-shapes, iconography, vase-painters and workshops. Special emphasis is given to the impact and distribution of Attic red-figure pottery, which represents the bulk of the archaeological material in almost all sites under examination. Especially interesting is the appearance of red-figure vases from the same Attic workshops in the south and northern parts of the kingdom from the late 5th century BC and onwards. Besides Attic pottery, local production of red-figure vases is examined, as well as the import of red-figure vases from other pottery centers. Finally, remarks on the trade routes in antiquity are made.
Same but different: A new possible scheme on late archaic black-figure vases
Dissertationes Archaeologicae ex Instituto ArchaeologicoUniversitatis de Rolando Eötvös nominata, 2024
Attic black-figure vases from the Late Archaic and Early Classical periods are often neglected by scholars. Most of them are not included in the Beazley Archive Pottery Database, significantly hindering related research. This paper presents such a vase from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. The authors propose that the scene on the lekythos, akin to others from the era, is a simplified version of a more elaborate one.