Painterly Ceramics in Classical Athens and Renaissance Italy
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PAINTERLY CERAMICS IN CLASSICAL ATHENS AND RENAISSANCE ITALY W. DAVID KINGERY Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Department of Anthropology University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 Fired clay vessels began to be produced in the Near East about 8,000 years ago; these vessels were utilitarian, undecorated, fired at a relatively low temperature and seem to have been derived from brick-making practices. By about 6,000 B.C., pottery making was a well developed craft and the use of slip coatings, ocher red and black decoration with control of oxidation-reduction during firing, impressed designs, rouletting, manganese oxide and spinel black pigments, coil and slab construction, burnishing, joining, paddle and anvil shaping, carving, trimming and preparing clays by decanting a suspension were widely known [1]. By the fifth millennium, these techniques had become quite sophisticated and were used to produce polychrome wares and glossy surfaces. Painted and glazed designs were confined to decorative motifs appropriate to a particular technique and culture. Among the early depictions of narrative events on pottery are Attic funeral amphora which show funerary and battle scenes of which an eighth century B.C. monumental amphora vase from the Dipylon Gate cemetery is best known. Beginning in the latter part of the seventh century, narrative scenes depicting Greek mythology and the 'Heroic Age' of Homer were produced which came to be a major category of deluxe pottery. They were manufactured continuously until the end of the Classical period in Greece toward the end of the fourth century [2]. The beginnings of modern depictions of narrative scenes on pottery began in Renaissance Italy toward the end of the fifteenth century. Istoriato (story telling) maiolica was produced in which the principle scenes of the narrative pictures were taken from biblical stories and Roman and Greek mythology. In the view of Warren Cox [3] "the pictorial and narrative element which was entirely out of place on pottery became dominant and most destructive of the art. The Italians never seem to grasp the beauty of an object in itself, but always had a yen to wrap it with stories, sentiments and emotions." Analyses of the decorative techniques used for these objects have shown that technological advances in paint and glaze preparation moved forward in parallel with the development of painterly techniques. The pottery served essentially as a ground for painting; these were the high technology, high valueadded ceramic products of their time. We propose to explore the interactions between these new technologies, the development of new painterly traditions and their relationships to social structures. GREEK BLACK-FIGURE AND RED-FIGURE PAINTED POTTERY The basic technique of using a fine fraction of clay, rich in iron oxide and potassium oxide, as a paint forming an impermeable glossy layer goes back to the fifth millennium B.C. Mat. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. Vol. 185. -1991 Materials Research Society
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[4,5]. It was used widely in the easte
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