Gnathia ceramics
A style of Greek vase painting from the 4th century BC is used in classical archeology as Gnathia ceramics . Chr. Designated.
Gnathiavasen were named after the ancient city of Gnathia (now Egnazia) in eastern Apulia . The first examples of this vase painting style were found there in the middle of the 19th century. The production of the vases began around 370/60 BC. BC in Apulia parallel to the red-figure style , which at this time began to become partially polychrome . A characteristic of Gnathia vases is the application of different colors directly to the varnished vase body. In addition to the different colors, internal structures could be introduced through incisions. The images and themes shown range from erotes and images from the world of women to theater scenes and Dionysian scenes, whereby the painting is often limited to the upper part of the vase body. The lower part is often only decorated with ornaments. The most important vessels were bell craters , peliks , oinochoes and skyphoi . The most important artists are the Konnakis painter and the rose painter .
Initially, a whole range of colors, white, yellow, orange, red, brown, green, and others, were used after 330 BC. The use of the white color pushes the other colors into the background. The range of topics is also narrowing, showing vine, ivy and laurel tendrils , theater masks , and within the tendrils men's and women's heads, pigeons and swans. The lower half of the vessels is now often grooved. In addition to oinochoes, skyphoi and peliks, bottles, lekyths , bowls and kantharoi are also painted. The most important painters of this phase are the painter of the bottle in the Louvre and the Dunedin painter . The late phase lasts about 25 years. During this time a return to figurative painting can be seen, erotic representations predominate. Kantharos and bowls with painted handles are now the most important image carriers . The grooving is retained, as is the heavy use of opaque white, which is now supplemented by yellow for a shadow effect .
In contrast to the red-figure vases, Gnathi vases from southern Italy were also traded in other areas of the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. In some cases, the influence on regional ceramic production was considerable ( e.g. western slope ceramics ). In addition to Apulia, Gnathia ceramics were also produced in Campania , Paestum and Sicily , only in Lucania there were only a few imitations. The Pocolom Group existed in Etruria and produced a vase painter who had immigrated from southern Italy.
literature
- Rolf Hurschmann : Gnathia vases. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 4, Metzler, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-476-01474-6 , column 1106 f.
