The Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens

The results of the author's lifetime's study of Greek vase-painting.

Martin Robertson (Author)

9780521338813, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 January 1994

364 pages, 300 b/w illus.
27.6 x 21.9 x 2.4 cm, 1.324 kg

"...a thorough, sober, yet critical, and very scholarly work which will provide hours of learned company for the specialist art historian, and from which the nonspecialist reader can derive extensive information and great enjoyment." Birgitte Ginge, Classical World

In his new book, Professor Martin Robertson - author of A History of Greek Art (CUP 1975) and A Shorter History of Greek Art (CUP 1981) - draws together the results of a lifetime's study of Greek vase-painting, tracing the history of figure-drawing on Athenian pottery from the invention of the 'red-figure' technique in the later archaic period to the abandonment of figured vase-decoration two hundred years later. The book covers red-figure and also work produced over the same period in the same workshops in black-figure and other techniques, especially that of drawing in outline on a white ground. The book is intended as a companion volume to Sir John Beazley's The Development of Attic Black-figure (originally published in 1951 by California University Press), and as an examination and defence of Beazley's methods and achievements. This book is a major contribution to the history of Greek vase-painting and anyone seriously interested in the subject - whether scholar, student, curator, collector or amateur - will find it essential reading.

Preface
Introduction
1. The beginning of red-figure
2. A time of ferment: the red-figure Pioneers and their contemporaries
3. After the Pioneers: red-figure mastery
the beginnings of white-ground
4. Archaic into classical
5. Early classical
6. High classical
7. Developments from the high classical
8. The later fifth century
developments into the fourth
9. The fourth century
Notes
Bibliography and abbreviations
List of illustrations
Index.

Subject Areas: Painting & art manuals [WFA], Ceramic arts, pottery, glass [AFP], History of art: ancient & classical art,BCE to c 500 CE [ACG]