Berlin Painter

Dionysos holding a kantharos (drinking cup). Side A from an Attic red-figure amphora, ca. 490-480 BC. Found in Vulci, Italy.

The Berlin Painter (working c. 490s–c. 460s BCE) is the pseudonym of an Attic Greek vase-painter who is widely regarded as a rival to the Kleophrades Painter among the most talented vase painters of the early fifth century B.C. (see Pottery of Ancient Greece). The Berlin Painter was named by Sir John Beazley for a large lidded amphora in the Antikensammlung Berlin (his namepiece)^[1]. The Berlin Painter began working in the Late Archaic style and helped develop the Classic style of Attic red-figure pottery. He produced a series of Panathenaic Amphorae.

His painted figures are usually isolated or paired without framing devices against a glossy black ground, so integral to the forms of their superbly-made bodies that the wares are thought to have been produced in his shop. Over a long career he trained many younger vase-painters, including, probably, the Achilles Painter.

Many of his valued works were preserved as elite grave goods in the necropoli of Magna Graecia, notably at Vulci, Nola and Locri.

Footnotes

1. ^ Perseus Project. Berlin F 2160

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Berlin Painter

• Berlin Painter on-line
• The Berlin Painter: Archaeology of the Corpus Present and former whereabouts of the vases attributed to the Berlin Painter.
• Perseus Project: "Thirty-three Vases whose Painter is 'Berlin Painter'"
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, red-figure amphora, c 490 BCE Figure of a rhapsode and a judge.
• Antikenmuseum, Basel: Lidded Amphora Figure of Athena
• Altes Museum, Berlin: Amphora attributed to the Berlin Painter

• Martin Robertson, The Art of Vase-painting in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1992)
• Andrew J. Clark, Maya Elston, Mary Louise Hart, Understanding Greek Vases: A Guide to Terms, Styles, and Techniques (Getty Museum Publications 2002)
• Donna Carol Kurtz (editor), The Berlin Painter: Drawings by Sir John Beazley (Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology) 1983

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