From a lump of clay to a pot in sections
Everyday pots were plain, undecorated wares for cooking and storing. The painted ones, which fill museum cases, were the fine tableware of their time, and in Athens they were made in two techniques, black-figure and red-figure, from the beginning of the sixth to the end of the fourth century BCE. Painted pottery was older than that, of course: in the Geometric period Athenian potters already covered their vases with bands of meanders.
The potter shaped the vessel on a wheel. A large pot was rarely thrown in one piece: the neck and the body were often made separately, and the foot was added later. When the parts had dried to a leather hardness, firm but still slightly flexible, like cheese that can be sliced without crumbling, the potter fitted them together and sealed the joints with slip, that is, clay thinned with water into a liquid. The handles came last.
One firing, three stages
Then came the painter. In black-figure he applied the figures with a slip that would turn black in the kiln, leaving the background the colour of the clay; in red-figure he did the opposite, filling the background with slip and leaving the figures in clay colour. What made the colours was the firing, done in three stages:
- Oxidizing: air was let into the kiln and the whole vase turned the colour of the clay.
- Reducing: green wood went into the fire and the oxygen was cut down, so in the smoky chamber the whole vase turned black.
- Reoxidizing: air came back in; the bare clay turned orange again, while the areas covered with the glossy slip stayed black.
In practice the picture appeared only in the kiln, and controlling the air at the right moment was the delicate part of the whole process.
Black-figure, red-figure, white ground
Black-figure came first: painters drew the details by scratching through the black slip and added touches of white and purple. Around 530 BCE red-figure was invented, quite possibly in the workshop of the potter Andokides. It gradually took over, because a figure left in clay colour could be drawn inside with a brush, in fine lines or diluted washes of slip, and a brush suits muscles, folds and faces far better than a scratching point.
A third technique, white ground, covered the vase with a pale slip and drew the figures in outline with added colours. In the fifth century it was used above all for lekythoi, oil flasks made for the grave.
Who made them? The signatures
Greek potters and painters sometimes signed their work. On the François Vase, a large krater made around 570 BCE, the painter wrote Kleitias egraphsen, “Kleitias painted me”, and the potter Ergotimos epoiesen, “Ergotimos made me”. Exekias signed his amphora with Achilles and Ajax, now in the Vatican, both as potter and as painter. On an amphora in the Metropolitan Museum the potter Andokides incised his signature on the foot.
Most painters, though, never signed, and scholars have named them after a potter they worked with, a museum or a favourite subject. The artist of that Met amphora is called the Andokides Painter for this reason.
What were they for?
Each painted shape had a job. Amphorae stored and carried wine and food, hydriai fetched water, kraters held the wine mixed with water at the symposium, kylikes and kantharoi were drinking cups, lekythoi held oil for pouring libations, and loutrophoroi carried water for the bride’s bath. The shapes have their own guide.
Some vases were prizes. Every four years Athens held games at the Panathenaic festival in honour of Athena, and each winner received amphorae of a special shape filled with olive oil from groves sacred to the goddess, about 40 litres per jar. Athena always appeared on one side, and the contest on the other: on a Met example of about 530 BCE, five runners sprint across the vase.
Why are so many Greek vases found in Italy?
Because the Etruscans bought them and took them to the grave. The François Vase was purchased by Etruscan aristocrats of Chiusi around 565 BCE, a few years after it was made, and placed in a large tomb with seven chambers, where it was found in 1844-45. Exekias’s amphora with Achilles and Ajax comes from Vulci, another Etruscan city. Etruscan tombs that stayed closed for more than two thousand years kept such vases almost intact.
That is the paradox of Greek pottery: the most fragile object in the house is one of the things that survived best, because fired clay does not rot, and even a vase in pieces can be put back together.
Where to see it
The François Vase is in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence, and Exekias’s amphora in the Museo Gregoriano Etrusco of the Vatican Museums. The Metropolitan Museum in New York has the Panathenaic amphora, the Andokides amphora and a large collection of Athenian vases in its Greek galleries. Check opening times on the museums’ websites before you go.
Sources
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Greek and Roman Art, “Athenian Vase Painting: Black- and Red-Figure Techniques”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (2002).
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection records 14.130.12, 63.11.6, 08.258.18.
- Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze and Catalogo generale dei Beni Culturali, “Vaso François” (scheda 0900514760).
- Musei Vaticani, “Anfora attica a figure nere firmata da Exekias”, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, Sala XIX.
