The Red Figured Vases Of Paestum

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This volume, which represents the Proceedings of an international conference sponsered by the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean at Columbia University, deals with Greek painted vases, and explores them from various methodological points of view.

Most of the previous scholarship on Paestan red-figure pottery has focused on the cataloguing of collections, the attribution of vases to painters and workshops, iconographic and stylistic matters, and individual vessels and vase forms. This partly reflects the history of vase-painting scholarship, which grew out of antiquarian collecting during 18th and 19th centuries, and partly the fact that a full archaeological provenance is not preserved for the majority of vessels. This book uses a database containing in excess of 1,800 vessels and fragments to identify patterns in the production and decoration of Paestan vases that cast light on the choices made by vase-producers and the preferences of their customers. It considers the popularity of different vessel shapes over time, the use of highly generic decorative scenes, which are characteristic of Paestan red-figure, as well as the popularity of scenes of myth, images of the gods, and scenes of nude and half-draped women. Paestan red-figure is compared with the vessels decorated in Applied Red produced at the same site. A comparison is also made between the output of the Paestan red-figure industry and that of Apulia. As the majority of the vases in the sample derive from tombs, the patterns identified provide insights into the ways in which the ancient populations of Paestum and South-West Italy commemorated the dead.

English summary: In this volume Alexander Cambitoglou, a world famous specialist in the field of italicized painted vases, publishes a small but interesting collection of red figure vases in the collection of Vercelli's Camillo Leone Museum. The Leone Collection was established between 1870-1907 by the Piemontese jurist who was profoundly interested in ancient art, and even today consists of twenty-nine Apulian vases and six from Campania. Among these, one might highlight a notable columned crater of the Berlin Dancer Painter. The historic profile outlined by Maurizio Harari aims at illustrating the cultural situation in Vercelli at the end of the XIX century. Italian description: In questo volume Alexander Cambitoglou, specialista di fama mondiale nel campo della pittura vascolare italiota, pubblica una piccola ma interessante collezione di vasi a figure rosse raccolti nel Museo Camillo Leone di Vercelli. La collezione Leone, formatasi tra il 1870 e il 1907 ad opera del giurista piemontese profondamente interessato all'arte antica, comprende a tutt'oggi ventinove vasi apuli e sei vasi campani, tra i quali spicca un notevolissimo cratere a colonna del Pittore della Danzatrice di Berlino. Il profilo storico tracciato da Maurizio Harari mira ad illustrare la situazione culturale di Vercelli alla fine del XIX secolo.