A History of Greek Art by Mark D. Stansbury-O'Donnell

Author:Mark D. Stansbury-O'Donnell [Stansbury-O'Donnell, Mark D.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781118839423
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-12-15T16:00:00+00:00

On this pot we see Achilles and Ajax playing a board game while resting from their duties. They call out their rolls in inscriptions, like a modern comic strip, with Achilles on the left having a four (tesara) and Ajax a three (tris). This subject is unusual and new in Attic art, and it is thought that this story of heroes gaming, for which we have no surviving literary source, might be an invention of Exekias. Susan Woodford has proposed that Exekias has created a scene that reflects the life of the warriors at Troy, including the tedium and the diversion through board games, which Palamedes was renowned for inventing (Woodford 1982, 178–179). In this light, we have to see artists as narrators in their own right, free to imagine a story that could have its own appeal and might catch the interest of viewers. In this case, his composition was the first of more than 150 surviving examples of the scene in Attic art, showing that it was not only popular with viewers, but was also copied by other painters in the Athenian potters’ quarter.

Among the earliest copies are in workshops associated with Exekias, where we also see the development of a new technique, red-figure painting. As can be seen on an amphora in Boston by the Andokides Painter, it is essentially a reversal of the black-figure composition (Figure 8.25). The figure’s outline is now defined by a thick brushstroke of paint and the background is then painted with black slip. Inside the outline, the silhouette of the figure is then the bare, red surface of the clay. Lines are drawn in the silhouette, thick black lines for major parts of the figures and lighter, dilute red-brown lines for finer details, as can be seen in the pot sherd of a test piece from the fifth century (see Figure 11.4, page 273). Additional applications of red and white slip can also appear. Some of the earliest vases in this technique, like the Boston amphora, feature black-figure on one side and red-figure on the other, and are called bilingual. Their style is very similar to the figures on the Siphnian Treasury, as can be seen by comparing the poses and details of anatomy to the scene of Achilles fighting Memnon from the east frieze (see Figure 8.1, page 183) or the Gigantomachy from the north frieze (Figure 9.1, page 212). This similarity to the earliest red-figure painting suggests a date of 530–520 BCE for the invention of the red-figure technique. Since the painter is no longer engraving through the black silhouette, but is applying slip directly to the surface, it is more like free painting, like the painted panel with sacrificial procession from Pitsa (see Figure 8.21).

8.25 Attic bilingual amphora (red-figure side) by the Andokides Painter, c. 525–520 BCE. 217/8 in (55.5 cm). Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 01.8037. Ajax and Achilles gaming.

Photograph © 2014 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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