Book Description

Most of the previous scholarship on Paestan red-figure pottery has focused on the cataloguing of collections, the attribution of vases to painters and workshops, iconographic and stylistic matters, and individual vessels and vase forms. This partly reflects the history of vase-painting scholarship, which grew out of antiquarian collecting during 18th and 19th centuries, and partly the fact that a full archaeological provenance is not preserved for the majority of vessels. This book uses a database containing in excess of 1,800 vessels and fragments to identify patterns in the production and decoration of Paestan vases that cast light on the choices made by vase-producers and the preferences of their customers. It considers the popularity of different vessel shapes over time, the use of highly generic decorative scenes, which are characteristic of Paestan red-figure, as well as the popularity of scenes of myth, images of the gods, and scenes of nude and half-draped women. Paestan red-figure is compared with the vessels decorated in Applied Red produced at the same site. A comparison is also made between the output of the Paestan red-figure industry and that of Apulia. As the majority of the vases in the sample derive from tombs, the patterns identified provide insights into the ways in which the ancient populations of Paestum and South-West Italy commemorated the dead.