Red-figure Pottery - Research and Reception

Research and Reception

About 65,000 red-figure vases and vase fragments are known to have survived. The study of ancient pottery and of Greek vase painting began already in the Middle Ages. Restoro d'Arezzo dedicated a chapter (Capitolo de le vasa antiche) of his description of the world to ancient vases. He considered especially the clay vessels as perfect in terms of shape, colour, and artistic style. Nevertheless, initially the attention focused on vases in general, and perhaps especially on stone vases. The first collections of ancient vases, including some painted vessels, developed during the Renaissance. We even know of some imports from Greece to Italy at that time. Still, until the end of the Baroque period, vase painting was overshadowed by other genres, especially by sculpture. A rare pre-Classicist exception is a book of watercolours depicting figural vases, which was produced for Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. Like some of his contemporary collectors, Peiresc owned a number of clay vases.

Since the period of Classicism, ceramic vessels were collected more frequently. For example, Sir William Hamilton and Giuseppe Valletta had vase collections. Vases found in Italy were relatively affordable, so that even private individuals could assemble important collections. Vases were a popular souvenir for young northwestern Europeans to bring home from the Grand Tour. In the diaries of his voyageto Italy, Goethe refers to the temptation of buying ancient vases. Those who could not afford originals had the option of acquiring copies or prints. There were even manufactories specialised in imitating ancient pottery. The best known is Wedgwood ware, although it employed techniques entirely unrelated to those used in antiquity, using ancient motifs merely as a thematic inspiration.

Since the 1760s, archaeological research also began to focus on vase paintings. The vases were appreciated as source material for all aspects of ancient life, especially for iconographical and mythological studies. Vase painting was now treated as a substitute for the almost entirely lost oeuvre of Greek monumental painting. Around this time, the widespread view that all painted vases were Etruscan works became untenable. Nonetheless, the artistic fashion of that time to imitate ancient vases came to be called all’etrusque. England and France tried to outdo each other in terms of both research and imitation of vases. The German aesthetic writers Johann Heinrich Müntz and Johann Joachim Winckelmann studied vase paintings. Winckelmann especially praised the Umrißlinienstil ("outline style", i.e. red-figure painting). Vase ornaments were compiled and disseminated in England through Pattern books.

Vase paintings even had an influence on the development of modern painting. The linear style influenced artists such as Edward Burne-Jones, Gustave Moreau or Gustav Klimt. Around 1840, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller painted a Still Life with Silver Vessels and Red-Figure Bell Krater. Henri Matisse produced a similar painting (Intérieur au vase étrusque). Their aesthetic influence extends into the present. For example, the well-known curved shape of the Coca Cola bottle is inspired by Greek vases.

The scientific study of Attic vase paintings was advanced especially by John D. Beazley. Beazley began to study the vases from about 1910 onwards, inspired by the methodology that the art historian Giovanni Morelli had developed for the study of paintings. He assumed that each painter produced individual works that can always be unmistakably ascribed. To do so, particular details, such as faces, fingers, arms, legs, knees, garment folds and so on, were compared. Beazley examined 65,000 vases and fragments (of which 20,000 were black-figure). In the course of six decades of study, he was able to ascribe 17,000 of them to individual artists. Where their names remained unknown, he developed a system of conventional names. Beazley also united and combined individual painters into groups, workshops, schools and styles. No other archaeologist has ever had as formative an influence on a whole subdiscipline as had Beazley on the study of Greek vase painting. A large proportion of his analysis is still considered valid today. Beazley first published his conclusions on red-figure vase painting in 1925 and 1942. His initial studies only considered material from before the 4th century BCE. For a new edition of his work published in 1963, he also incorporated that later period, making use of the work of other scholars, such as Karl Schefold, who had especially studied the Kerch Style vases. Famous scholars who continued the study of Attic red-figure after Beazley include John Boardman, Erika Simon and Dietrich von Bothmer.

For the study of South Italian case painting, Arthur Dale Trendall's work has a similar significance to that of Beazley for Attica. Most post-Beazley scholars can be said to follow Beazley's tradition and use his methodology. The study of Greek vases is ongoing, not least because of the constant addition of new material from archaeological excavations, illicit excavations and unknown private collections.