File:Very early red figure pot ARV 11 1 Dionysos with maenads - Achilles and Ajax playing (15).jpg

English: object type / vase shape: attic bilingual amphora type A

- description side A: Dionysos between two dancing maenads - side B: Achilles and Ajax playing (throwing dices), Athena appears to call them back to the battle. This is a remarkable piece because it is one of the very few attic red figure vases come down to us (via the Etruscans) showing the signs of experimentation and imperfection one would expect when a new technique is invented. This does not mean, that it is one of the earliest preserved red figure vases. Rather the vase painter, obviously part of the same workshop as the Andokides Painter (the presumed inventor of the new technique around 530 BC), imitated the great master in making experiments with the red figure way of painting: the figures are spared out, the background is painted black which demands careful planning and sketching. In my opinion, this amphora, as the bilingual amphoras of the Andokides Painter (e. g. in London and Munich) is not intended to demonstrate the superiority of the new technique, but rather shows on the two sides of the vase the possibilities the black and the red figure technique offer at its best. In this case the black figure side takes up the theme of the playing heroes resting from the battle for Troy, famous and very popular since the black figure Artist Exekias indroduced this scene (nowhere mentioned in the Homeric poems), and shows the typical late archaic fondness for detail, pattern, symmetry and added colour. On the red figure side the artist demonstrates, that the warm orange colour of the figures gives depth to the picture, stressing his point by depicting as many overlapping layers as possible. In one case he made a characteristic mistake filling in the space between the twisted wine branches thus "making a hole" into the fawn standing behind. The painter - as the Andokikes painter - uses small balls of clay to give a relief to some grapes, he adds exuberantly dark red colour to details, incises many outlines and some details (like in black figure) and paints the framing decoration in black figure, thus betraying that he is a novice in the red figure technique. - production place: Athens - painter: not attributed - period / date: late archaic, ca. 510 BC - material: pottery (clay) - height: 54,5 cm - findspot: Vulci - museum / inventory number: München, Staatliche Antikensammlungen 2300 - temporarily on loan in: Weiden, Keramikmuseum - bibliography: John D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, Oxford 1963(2), 11, 1

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