Red-figure pottery

Red-figure pottery is a style of Greek pottery, later adopted in southern Italy, in which the figure outlines, details and the background are painted black, while the figure itself is not painted. This way, the figures take on the reddish tone of Athenian clay after it has been burned in the presence of oxygen, due to the clay's high iron content.

Red-figure pottery, developed around 530 BC by the Andokides Painter, superseded the earlier black-figure pottery, except in the case of Panathenaic Amphorae, because the new process allowed more intricate detail on the ornaments, humans, animals, etc. depicted. When developed, it was one of several techniques with which artists experimented. The techniques and conventions of red-figure painting were developed by a group of artists known as the Pioneer Group (among them Euphronios and Euthymides). It became the predominant technique and remained popular until the late 4th century BC.

Red-figure pottery is considered to mark the apex of Greek pottery, as most vases or cups famous today for their skillful painting are in the red-figure style.

The Red-figure Technique

Creating a finished piece of red-figure pottery required close collaboration between the potter and the painter. The potter would shape the piece out of clay and deliver it to the painter while the clay was still damp. The painter would paint the vase using an instrument like a pastry bag with a syringelike nozzle of bone or wood to lay out the fine detail lines and background colors.

Since the paint only developed its color once the piece was fired in a kiln, the painter had to paint almost entirely from memory, unable to see his previous work. Additionally, the colors could only be applied while the clay was still wet, so the painter had to work very quickly. In the large kraters painted with the red-figure technique, this meant that tens of thousands of invisible lines had to be applied, each ending precisely at the right point to prevent overlapping in the intricate detailwork, in an extremely short period of time.

Despite these constraints, red-figure painters developed an intricate and detailed style. The Pioneer Group of painters in particular used the red-figure technique to achieve a naturalism not previously seen in earlier styles. Humans and animals were depicted in naturalistic poses with schematic but accurate anatomy, and techniques of foreshortening and illusionistic perspective were developed to exploit the relative freedom of the red-figure method.

Red-figure Pottery Painters

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