Hieron (potter)

Judgment of Paris on a Kylix in the Berlin Antikensammlung ; signed by Hieron and decorated by Makron; around 490/80 BC Chr.

Greek ambassador to Achilles in Skyros on a skyphos in the Louvre ; signed by Hieron and decorated by Makron; around 480 BC Chr.

Hieron's signature on a bowl in the Louvre .; around 480 BC Chr.

Hieron ( ancient Greek Ἱέρων ) was an Attic potter from the first half of the 5th century BC. He is best known for his collaboration with Makron , a vase painter of the red-figure style , and for his willingness to sign .

Hieron, of whom nothing is known apart from his works, was a very willing potter. Today at least 58 signatures are known, several of them on Skyphoi , but the majority on Kylikes , the Attic drinking bowls that were considered particularly difficult to make. Hieron, like the vase painter Makron, who is closely associated with him, is regarded as an outstanding expert in the production of late Archaic bowls. What is striking is the close connection between the outstanding late Archaic vase painters and a potter, such as Duris with the potter Python and the Brygos painter with the potter Brygos . However, none of these collaborations seems to have been as close and constant as with Hieron and Makron. Both signatures appear only on a skyphos that is now kept in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston . Most of the other signed bowls were assigned to Makron as a painter for stylistic reasons; a total of around 30 of the works signed by Hieron are assigned to Makron. Hieron may have been the producer of all over 600 vases that are assigned to Macron for stylistic reasons, but assigning them to pottery hands is many times more complicated. Both are therefore an outstanding example of the close collaboration between potters and vase painters over a long period of time. A few pieces of Hieron decorated other painters, including the Telephos Painter , the Amphitrite Painter, and possibly Hermonax . On a kantharos in Boston, where the authenticity of the signature is disputed, the patronymic Medon is mentioned in the signature.

Hieron's work is considered to be quite homogeneous. More recent suggestions on the chronology of the vases lead to the conclusion that signatures do not appear in the early work, but are limited to the more mature main work and the earlier later work. Hieron only had the really successful vases signed. His bowls belong to the Attic type B , in which the bowl body and foot merge continuously. The proportions correspond to the bowls, such as those made by the potters Euphronios and Brygos at the time. As early as the late 1930s, Hansjörg Bloesch showed in his studies that all of Hieron's large bowls have one thing in common: the underside of the stiff base plate is connected to the inner wall of the stem by a sharp curve, the upper side is formed by a one that runs around the profile Divided foot heel. Hieron is somewhat more flexible when it comes to designing smaller bowls, which he used around 500 BC. His career had started. In the third decade of the 5th century BC As in other workshops, these small bowls were again of greater importance in his work. Hieron's activity ended around 450 BC. And, depending on the dating of his works, covered a period of up to 50 years. Few potters can look back on a similarly long creative period.

literature

• Hieron . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 17 : Heubel – Hubard . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1924, p. 61 .
• Hansjörg Bloesch : Forms of Attic bowls from Exekias to the end of the strict style . Benteli, Bern 1940, pp. 91–96.
• John D. Beazley : Attic Red-figure Vase-painters. 2nd edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1963, pp. 481-482.
• John Boardman : Red-Figure Vases from Athens. The archaic time (= cultural history of the ancient world . Volume 4). Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1981, ISBN 3-8053-0234-7 , pp. 99, 155, 213.
• Norbert Kunisch : Macron. (= Research on ancient ceramics . Series 2: Kerameus. Volume 10), Zabern, Mainz 1997, ISBN 3-8053-1890-1 , esp. Pp. 6–15.
• Cornelia Isler-Kerényi : Hieron (I) . In: Rainer Vollkommer (Hrsg.): Künstlerlexikon der Antike . Volume 1: A-K. Saur, Munich / Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-598-11413-3 , p. 319 = Hieron (I) . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 73, de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023178-6 , p. 123.
• Thomas Mannack : Greek vase painting. An introduction . Theiss, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-8062-1743-2 , p. 144.

Web links

Commons : Hieron  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Hieron in the Beazley Archives

Single receipts

1. ↑ Inventory number F 2291.
2. ↑ Inventory number G 146.
3. ↑ Inventory number G 142.
4. ↑ Inventory number 13.186: HIERON EPOIESEN, MAKRON EGRAPHSEN; Entry in the museum database .
5. ↑ number based on Thomas Mannack ; In his 1981 handbook, John Boardman assumed that there were only 350 works, which would nevertheless make Makron the red-figure vase painter from whom most of the vases have come down to us.
6. ↑ Inventory number 98.932: ΙΕΡΟΝ ΜΕΔΟΝΤΟΣ ΕΠΟΙ [Ε]; Entry in the museum database  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .