Exekias
The greatest black figure master
of all time?
Proscribed Vases: Exekias Belly
Amphora Side A Achilles & Ajax
Proscribed Vases: Exekias Belly Amphora Side B
Return of Castor & Pollux
Proscribed Vases:
Exekias eye kylix dionysus
Exekias Belly Amphora
Vase: Belly Amphora
Potter & Painter:
Exekias signed
Date: 550 - 540 B.C.
Height: 61 cm
Subject:
Side A: Achilles & Ajax
Side B: Return of the
Dioskouri
Exekias Side A
• Exekias signed both as potter and painter.
His masterpiece is the belly amphora in
Vatican, dated to c.540-530. Its detailed
representation, especially the patterns on
garments and armours, cannot be found
any other painter's works.
The myth: Side A
• Achilles was the brave Greek hero in
Homer's Iliad. When Achilles was a baby
his mother Thetis dipped him into the river
Styx. The magic water protected his body,
except for his heel, which his mother was
holding. Achilles was killed in the Trojan
War when Paris’ arrow struck him on the
heel.
The Tragedy of Ajax
• Ajax recovered Achilles
body when Paris shot
Achilles.
• Athene gave achilles
armour to Odysseus so
he boasted he did not
need the gods help
• Athene drove him mad
and he killed cattle in the
belief they were the
enemy.
• Ajax committed suicide
due to the shame
Subject side A: A game
• This vase shows Ajax and Achilles two
Greek heroes playing a game similar to
backgammon.
• Herodotus, the 5th century Greek historian
believed board games came from Asia
Minor. Counters, dice and game pieces
made of stone, bone and clay have been
found.
Composition Side A
• The painter
made
viewer's eyes
concentrate
on the board
at the centre
led by the
heroes' eyes,
hands and
spears.
Composition Side A
• Also the
spears
lead our
eyes to
the
handles.
Composition Side A
• Although the figures
are symmetrically
arranged, Exekias
differenciate both
figures in every detail.
• list the differences
you can see
Composition Side A
• It is also
noticeable that
depth is
represented by
overlapping
spear, board,
legs and
mantles.
Composition Side A
• The composition
complements the
form of the vase.
• Figures are bent
toward game and
curve of their backs
echoes curve of vase.
Composition Side A
• Their spears
lead the eye
up toward
the handles.
Composition Side A
• The shields
continue the
vertical line of
the bottom of
the handle.
Composition Side A
• Each man is shown with a helmet.
Treatment of the figure
• Archaic frontal
eye in profile
head
• Note the large
eyeball and
elongated
whites of eyes.
Leather corset
• Leather corset with
plates at waist for
protection and ease
of movement
• Worn with chiton
underneath
Greaves and thigh guards
• Greaves are like
cricketers knee pads.
• Fastened behind
knee using thongs
• Usually metal; bronze
or iron
• Note circled areas on
the vase
Crest
• Made from horse hair to
distinguish fighters and
make leaders more
visible to their men
• Achilles is wearing his to
make him the larger
figure.
• Note the flopply crest and
the tail trailing down the
side of helmet
Treatment of the figure
• Achilles Clothing
• Label these
items on your
pictures in your
books.
• NB there is no 6
Side B: Return of the dioskouroi
• Kyllaros, the horse tamed by Castor, dominates the scene. Behind is
Castor. On the left side welcoming her sons is Leda and
Polydeuces patting the hound. On the right is Tyndaros king of
Sparta and servant boy carrying blankets/ cloacks and arabollos
filled with oil or perfume for the travellers.
Da Vinci’s Leda
Leda and the swan; dali
The Myth in brief
• Leda was the Spartan queen, wife of Tyndareus and
mother of the double sets of twins, Castor and
Polydeuces and Clytemnestra and Helen.
• The best known story is that Zeus disguised himself as a
swan and seduced Leda. Thus Leda's children hatched
from two eggs that she produced.
• It appeared that on a single night Zeus, in the guise of a
swan, lay with Leda, who conceived Polydeuces (Pollux)
and Helen "of Troy“. Later the same night her mortal
husband, Tyndareus, king of Sparta, lay with his wife too,
and she conceived Castor and Clytemnestra.
• Thus one set of twins were wholly mortal Castor and
Clytemnestra, the other set half-immortal Polydeuces
and Helen "of Troy" .
Castor and Polydeuces
• In Greek mythology, Castor (or Kastor) and Polydeuces
(sometimes called Pollux) were the twin sons of Leda
• They are called the Dioscuri (dios kouroi), meaning the "Sons of
Zeus",
• They are known as the Gemini, Latin for twins.
• Polydeuces was a powerful boxer, and Castor a great horseman.
• Castor and Polydeuces abducted and married Phoebe and Hilaeira,
the daughters of Leucippus. In return, Idas and Lynceus, nephews of
Leucippus (or rival suitors), killed Castor.
• Polydeuces was granted immortality by Zeus, and persuaded Zeus
to share his gift with Castor. Accordingly, the two spend alternate
days as gods on Olympus and as deceased mortals in Hades.
Exekias Kylix
Vase: Kylix
Potter & Painter: Exekias
signed
Date: 535 B.C.
Diameter: 30.5 cm
Subjects
Interior: Dionysus
Exterior: pair of apotropaic
eyes
Exterior under handles:
Hoplites fight over bodies of
fallen.
Foot signed by Exekias
Exekias Kylix
• It was found in the Etruscan city of Vulci in
Italy and is thus part of the abundant
evidence of lively trade in the ancient
Mediterranean.
• It is now in the Staatliche
Antikensammlungen of the Bayerisches
Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft,
Forschung und Kunst in Munich.
It is known as munich 2044
Signing vases
• We know the names of some potters and painters of
Greek vases because they signed their work.
Generally a painter signed his name followed by
some form of the verb 'painted',
• While a potter (or perhaps the painter writing for
him) signed his name with 'made'.
• Sometimes the same person might both pot and
paint: Exekias for example, sign as both potter and
painter.
• At other times potter and painter were different
people and one or both of them signed. Like the
francois vase
• However, not all painters or potters signed all their
work . Some seem never to have signed their vases,
unless by chance signed pieces by these craftsmen
have not survived.
Inscriptions
• It is signed by Exekias, a potter and painter working in
Athens in about 530 BC,
.On foot of opposite side: see C&H pg 30
ECHSEKIAS EPOESE ("Exekias made it")
Shape
• Cup for wine drinking
• Exekias introduced
new shape is so
called ‘A type’ which
has a shallow bowl
with plain lip and a
splaying foot offset
from the bowl.
Interior decoration
• The tondo has
Dionysos lying on his
ship surrounded by
dolphins. Exekias
filled around the
tondo with coral red,
though this technique
was rarely followed.
Decoration
Interior
• Dionysos in a
ship, sailing
amongst
dolphins.
Decoration
Interior
• Dionysos reclines like
a symposiast in his
ship, holding a keras
or rhyton (drinking
horn) in his right hand
and leaning back on
his left arm.
Decoration
Interior
• The white sail of
the ship spreads
above him, and
climbing the mast
of the ship, a
grapevine with
clusters of grapes
fills the field of the
cup.
Decoration
Interior
• The prow of the ship
is decorated with
eyes; the body of the
ship with two leaping
dolphins and the
stern post bends up
into a swan's head.
A random modern version of myth
without Dionysus but a bear
instead?
The Myth
• Based on Homer’s ‘Hymn to Dionysos’
• Dionysus was kidnapped on the way to
Greece by pirates.
• He revealed his divine persona by turning
the mast into a vine which grow vines
which produced grapes, as Dionysus is
the god of wine.
• The terrified pirates jumped overboard and
turned into dolphins.
Exterior decoration
• On both sides A and B, large apotropaic eyes
like those on East Greek cups, with eyebrows
and diminutive noses.
Exterior decoration
• Beneath and on
either sides of
the handles,
battles over
fallen heroes
(fight for the
body of
Patroklos?).
Exterior decoration
• The warrior has already been stripped of his
armor. Armour is the prize of the victors
Exterior decoration
• On this side, he is armed.
Development of Black figure
• In Athens, in the Archaic period, potters
made clay pots with mythological scenes on
them.
• Gradually the scenes grew and took over
more of the pot, and the geometric
decoration took up less and less space.
• At the same time, a new painting technique
developed. Instead of painting figures of
people in outline, the Athenian potters began
to paint people in silhouette: this is called
black-figure, because the people are all
black.
Making and decorating
Athenian black figure vases
•The first stage in making a pot is to dig the
clay out of the ground. Pieces of grit or plant
matter must be removed before the clay can be
used. This was done in ancient times, as it is
today, by mixing the clay with water and letting
the heavier impurities sink to the bottom. This
process could be carried out as many times as
necessary. When judged to be sufficiently fine,
the clay was left to dry out to the required
consistency.
Making a pot
• To make a vase the potter kneaded a
lump of clay of suitable size and placed
it centrally on the flat surface of the
wheel. As the wheel revolved, the potter
drew the clay up into the required
shape with his hands.
Making a pot
• Scenes on the vases themselves show
that potters' wheels were discs,
presumably made of wood, clay or
stone, about two feet in diameter, with
socketed bases fitting over low, fixed
pivots. It seems to have been usual to
have a boy, presumably an apprentice
potter, to turn the wheel by hand.
Making a pot
• Particularly large vases were thrown in
sections, and in the case of shapes
such as cups, the foot would be thrown
separately from the body. The handles
of most shapes were hand-made. When
all the components had been allowed to
dry for about twelve hours, they were
glued together with clay slip.
Firing a pot
• Black figure is done all with one type of clay.
The clay found near Athens has a lot of iron
in it, so it looks black when it is wet. But if
you fire it in an oven where there is plenty of
air getting in, the clay rusts, and turns red.
This is because the iron mixes with the
oxygen in the air. If you fire it in an oven with
no air getting in, the iron can't mix with
oxygen, and the pot stays black. So you can
have either red or black pots.
Firing a pot
• So how do you get a picture? You make
a pot the regular way, and let it dry a
little ("leather-dry"). Then you mix a
little of the wet clay with a lot of water,
to make a kind of paint (called the slip),
which you use to make the black part of
the picture. (You can't see it now,
because it is all the same color). And
you let the whole thing dry.
Firing a pot
• When it is dry, you fire it in a kiln. First you
give it a lot of air, so the whole pot turns red,
slip and all. Then you shut off the air supply,
but just for a little while right at the end of
the firing. When the air runs out, the fire
sucks oxygen right out of the clay of the pot.
But the places where there is slip, the slip is
thinner and easier to suck air out of. So the
slip turns black (the color of iron with no
oxygen in it) faster than the rest of the pot
(which is red, the color of iron with oxygen in
it).
Firing Athenian black- and red
figure vases
• A distinctive red and black colour scheme
characterises most of the painted pottery of sixthand fifth-century Athens. The colours result from the
skilful exploitation of the high iron content of
Athenian clay by an ingenious process of differential
firing. The black areas of a black or red-figured pot
were coated in a fine solution of the same clay that
was used for the body of the vase. Before the vase
was placed in the kiln, it would have been orange-red
in colour, with the coated areas slightly deeper in
tone. D. Williams, Greek vases (London, The British
Museum Press, 1999)
Firing step 1
• Once the kiln had been loaded, the a threestage firing took place. In the first, oxidising,
phase plenty of air was allowed into the kiln,
and the temperature was gradually made to
rise to around 800º C. At this point, the vase
turned a bright orange-red, as the oxygen in
the atmosphere combined with the iron in the
clay to produce (red) ferric oxide. D.
Williams, Greek vases (London, The British
Museum Press, 1999)
Firing step 2
• When the potter judged that the required
temperature had been reached, he stopped up the air
vents and perhaps introduced damp material in the
form of green wood or even bowls of water. This
produced a reducing (oxygen-poor) atmosphere in
the kiln and the red ferric oxide was converted to
(black) ferrous oxide, so that the entire pot turned
black. The temperature in the kiln continued to rise
to around 945º C. The intense heat caused the fine
particles of the clay of the coated areas of the pot to
'sinter', that is, to fuse together to form a hard,
smooth, almost glassy surface. D. Williams, Greek
vases (London, The British Museum Press, 1999)
Firing step 3
• In the third and final stage, the temperature was
allowed to drop, and at about 900º C the ventilation
holes were opened up, oxygen returned to the
atmosphere of the kiln, and the ferrous oxide of the
uncoated areas converted back to ferric oxide, so
that as the kiln cooled down these parts turned
orange-red again. The sealed surface of the sintered
areas was impervious to the presence of the oxygen
and so remained black.
• D. Williams, Greek vases (London, The British
Museum Press, 1999)