Red-figure Pottery - Southern Italy

Southern Italy

At least from a modern point of view, the Southern Italian red-figure vase paintings represent the only region of production that reaches Attic standards of artistic quality. After the Attic vases, the South Italian ones (including those from Sicily), are the most thoroughly researched. In contrastic to their Attic counterparts, they were mostly produced for local markets. Only few pieces have been found outside Southern Italy and Sicily. The first workshops were founded in the mid-5th century BCE by Attic potters. Soon, local craftsmen were trained and the thematic and formal dependence on Attic vases overcome. Towards the end of the century, the distinctive "ornate style" and "plain style" developed in Apulia. Especially the ornate style was adopted by other mainland schools, but without reaching the same quality.

By now, 21,000 South Italian vases and fragments are known. Of those, 11,000 are ascribed to Apulian workshops, 4,000 to Campanian, 2,000 to Paestan, 1,500 to Lucanian and 1,000 to Sicilian ones.

Read more about this topic:  Red-figure Pottery

Famous quotes containing the words southern and/or italy:

    I think those Southern writers [William Faulkner, Carson McCullers] have analyzed very carefully the buildup in the South of a special consciousness brought about by the self- condemnation resulting from slavery, the humiliation following the War Between the States and the hope, sometimes expressed timidly, for redemption.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)

    In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!
    Orson Welles (1915–84)