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Some Red-figure Vase-painters of the Chalcidice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Extract

The four seasons of excavation conducted by D. M. Robinson at Olynthos between 1928 and 1938 produced a large quantity of red-figure pottery from settlement and cemetery. This material was published in volumes 5 and 13 of the final report. Robinson recognized that many of the red-figure fragments were of local Chalcidic fabric, and he tried to distinguish a few hands, but he made no detailed study. In ARV 1507–9 J. D. Beazley attributed a number of vases to a Painter of Olynthos 5.156 and a Group of Olynthos 5.141, and noted that they ‘might be local Olynthian’ but he ‘did not see that they differed from Attic in clay or technique’. More recently a few local red-figure vases, from private collections and rescue excavations, have been published, and others, still unpublished, are on display in the museums of Salonica and Polygiros. The excavations at Torone, still in progress, have also produced some fragments of non-Attic red-figure. On the basis of this material I have tried to distinguish more clearly some of the red-figure painters active in the Chalcidice in the fourth century; but I ought to emphasize that there are many vases and fragments not included here.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1981

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References

1 Robinson, D. M., Excavations at Olynthus, Part V: Mosaics, Vases, and Lamps of Olynthus Found in 1928 and 1931 (Baltimore, 1933)Google Scholar, hereafter Olynthus 5. Robinson, D. M., Excavations at Olynthus, Part XIII: Vases Found in 1934 and 1938 (Baltimore, 1950)Google Scholar, hereafter Olynthus 13. A few pieces were also published in the preliminary reports in AJA. I am most grateful to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens for allowing me to study the Olynthos pottery, and to Dr. Hector Catling, Director of the British School at Athens, for his constant assistance. I am also very grateful to Dr. Katerina Rhomiopoulou for allowing me to study many of the Olynthos vases in the Salonica and Polygiros museums and for permission to publish new photographs of some; and to Dr. Katerina Despinis and Dr. Iulia Vokotopoulou for their kind assistance in Salonica. Dr. Ann Birchall and Dr. Michael Vickers kindly allowed me to examine and to illustrate vases in London and Oxford respectively. Ms. Christine Insley, of Christie, Manson and Wood Ltd., has kindly supplied me with information about vases on the London market. Professor A. D. Trendall, Professor Cedric Boulter, and Dr. Elizabeth Pemberton have read a draft of this article, and I thank them for their comments.

2 See AJA 36 (1932) 129 and Olynthus 13, 16–17. I use the term Chalcidic for this red-figure fabric rather than Olynthian because I cannot be sure that Olynthos was the, or even a, centre of manufacture.

3 Zaphiropoulou, Photini, ‘Vases peints du Musée de Salonique’, BCH 94 (1970) 361435, esp. 422 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; eadem, Μιὰ ἄγνωστη νεκρόπολη τῆς Χαλκιδικῆς ADelt 19 (1964) A 84–112, esp. 99–101; Petsas, Photios, ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΚΑ (1967) 310 with pl. 27Google Scholar; 15 (1975) 222 with pls. 138b and 140b; Yiouri, E., ‘Ἡ Κεραμεικὴ τῆς Χαλκιγικῆς στὸν 40 αἰῶνα π.χ.ΚΕΡΝΟΣ (1972) 614 and 235.Google Scholar

4 For Torone, see PAE 1975 (1977), 103–30; PAE 1976 (1978). 138–41; PAE 1977 (1980), 75–135.

5 Munsell Soil Color Charts (Baltimore, 1975).

6 Thucydides i 57–65. Also Meiggs, Russell, The Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1972), 210–11, 252–3, and 309–11.Google Scholar More specifically on the political history of Olynthos see Zahrnt, M., Olynth und die Chalkidier: Untersuchungen zur Staatenbildung auf der Chalkidischen Halbinsel im 5. und 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Munich, 1971).Google Scholar

7 Thucydides ii 70.

8 BCH 94 (1970) 433.

9 ARV 2 1187, 37. Aurigemma, S., La necropoli di Spina in Valle Trebba ii (Rome, 1965), pl. 133Google Scholar; Alfieri, N., Musei d'Italia, Spina, museo archeologico (Bologna, 1979), 84, figs. 190–1.Google Scholar Compare also Sparkes, Brian and Talcott, Lucy, The Athenian Agora xii: Black and Plain Pottery (Princeton, 1970), pl. 16, nos. 348, 349 and pp. 84–5, 259–60.Google Scholar

10 ARV 2 1441, 4 and 5 respectively. Vienna 946 has now been published with new photographs: CVA Vienna 3, pl. 134, 1–2.

11 Olynthus 5, 137.

12 BCH 94 (1970) 434–5.

13 ARV 2 1441, now published in CVA Vienna 3, pl. 131: 5–6.

14 ARV 2 1491, 199, CVA Capua 2, pl. 15: 9. Later skyphoi of the F.B. Group omit the egg pattern at the rim and are decorated solely with draped youths.

15 ARV 2 1488, 131; 1488, 134.

16 MrsZaphiropoulou, in BCH 94 (1970) 435CrossRefGoogle Scholar seems to take the skyphos as Attic, connected with the F.B. Group and the Painter of London F 128. There can be no doubt that the vase is close to later skyphoi from the F.B. Group, but the drawing of the youths is quite different, and Attic draped youths do not normally hold thyrsoi.

17 Trendall, A. D. and Cambitoglou, Alexander, The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia I (Oxford, 1978), 228, 9/22Google Scholar, Matera 11676, Painter of Vatican V 14; 290, 11/29–32, opera minora from the workshop of the Ilioupersis Painter.

18 Other epichyseis from Olynthos: Salonica 505, Olynthus 5, pl. 57: 84; Salonika 8.41, Olynthus 5, pl. 60: 92; Salonica 34*****.313a Olynthus 13, pl. 83: 993a. On the Olynthos examples see also Green, J. R., Studies in Honour of Arthur Dale Trendall (Sydney, 1979), 81 and 87Google Scholar, note 6. Two fragments of an Apulian red-figure epichysis of c. 330 B.C. have been found at Corinth (C-61–459 A–B, Trendall, /Cambitoglou, , RVAp i, p. xlviiiGoogle Scholar) as well as parts of three Gnathian epichyseis: C-75–222 A–B; C-32–64, Studies Trendall, pl. 20, 1–2; C-69–138 (round-bellied variety), Studies Trendall, pl. 20, 3 and Hesperia 39, 1970, pl. 1, 1. I am most grateful to Mr. C. K. Williams II for allowing me to mention these fragments.

19 On the shape see Sparkes, and Talcott, , Agora xii, 107–8Google Scholar and the references cited in p. 107 n. 1.

20 I have not seen the Bologna vase. It is illustrated by Heydemann, , Mittheilungen aus den Antikensammlungen in Oberund Mittelitalien (Drittes Hallisches Winckelmannprogramm: Halle, 1879), pl. 1, 1Google Scholar, and more recently by Schauenburg, K., Antike Welt 7/4 (1976) 30Google Scholar, fig. 29.

21 See Olynthus 13, pls. 212–3.

22 For example Udine 1557, Borda, M., La ceramica italiota a figure rosse nei musei civici di Udine (Udine, 1973), no. 31.Google Scholar Trendall calls the shape a ‘cup-skyphos’. Trendall, /Cambitoglou, , RVAp i 289, 11/16–20Google Scholar and pl. 92, 7–8. The shape is first decorated about 380 B.C. among the followers of the Tarporley Painter, Trendall, /Cambitoglou, , RVAp i, 121Google Scholar, 5/183–183a (Truro Painter).

23 For example Forti, Lidia, La ceramica di Gnathia (Naples, 1965), pls. viia and xvbGoogle Scholar, middle row, centre.

24 Beazley dates the bolsal in Polygiros to the second quarter of the fourth century: BSA 41 (1940–5) 18–19, note 2.

25 In the later fifth and fourth century ‘bilingual’ vases occur in Euboean e.g. Berlin F 4086, plate, BSA 65 (1970) pl. 70b–c, and in Boeotian vase-painting e.g. Athens, Kanello-poulos Museum 2463, bell-krater, BCH 99 (1975) 510, fig. 54.

26 Schefold, K., Untersuchungen zu den Kertscher Vasen (Berlin, 1934), pl. 8Google Scholar, right. The pelike 2 was found in Grave 308 of the Riverside Cemetery (Olynthus 11, 64) and contained, in addition to human bones, a silver coin, 34.C337 (Olynthus 9, 229, 3 and pl. 30: 41). Unfortunately the coin does not appear to be closely datable.

27 Athens 14899, ARV 2 p. 1455, 1, Schefold, Untersuchungen pl. 39, below; Paris, Petit Palais 328, ARV 2 1455, 4, CVA Petit Palais, pl. 24: 5. A sixth vase by the Painter of the London Griffin-Calyx, also a calyx-krater, is in a private collection in Naples: on the obverse, a griffin attacking Arimasps; on the reverse, an Arimasp attacked by two griffins.

28 I am indebted to Dr. Dietrich von Bothmer for kindly allowing me to publish the photographs and for providing me with information about the vase.

29 The hydria is also illustrated in ADelt 24 ( 1969) pl. 293b and BCH 95 (1971) 953, fig. 334. I ought perhaps to add that the vase is not South Italian, a point kindly confirmed by Professor Trendall.

30 The local red-figure from Olympia will be published in the nearfuture by Dr. F. Hamdorf, to whom I am indebted for his kind permission to study the material. An Elean red-figure pelike in Liverpool is published by A. D. Trendall and the author in an article to appear in Studi in onore di Paolo Arias (in press).

31 The sash held by the right-hand maenad is not unlike those shown on Lecce 612 and Lecce 736, RVAp i 5/3–4. The handle-palmette, particularly the small T at the heart of the upper palmette, may be compared with those on the bell-krater Budapest 57.4a, RV Ap i 5/71. I do not know any exact parallel in Apulian for the interlocking motif used as the pattern-band on the Salonica hydria, though a very similar design appears in Campanian on the Boating Painter's namepiece, Melbourne D27/1979, Trendall, A. D., The Red-figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily (Oxford, 1967), 246, no. 139Google Scholar, and Art Bulletin of Victoria 19 (1979) 8–11.