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Keely Heuer (SUNY-New Paltz) discusses the unusual iconography of South Italian red-figure ceramics, including scenes inspired by long-lost tragic plays, scenes of Italic warriors and female companions, elaborate representations of funerary monuments, and depictions of the underworld.Geographically, we typically think of ancient Greece in terms of cities that are within the modern Greek state, such as Athens, Corinth, and Sparta. However, the Greek sphere extended far beyond the Aegean Sea, with a particular concentration along the coastlines of southern Italy and Sicily, where Greeks began establishing permanent settlements starting around 760 BCE. The Greek population was so numerous in this part of the Mediterranean that it became known in antiquity as Megale Hellas or Magna Graecia (Great Greece).
These Greek settlers were in close connection with their indigenous Italic neighbors, with whom they traded and intermarried. Inhabitants of Greek and Italic communities imported pottery from the Greek mainland, first from Corinth and then later from Athens in substantial quantities. Then, around 450-440 BCE, the technology to produce red-figure vases, along with the shapes and iconography, was transferred from the Athenian Kerameikos to Metaponto in modern Basilicata, probably brought by immigrant craftsmen looking to increase their profits by eliminating merchant middlemen and bringing their workshop directly to their clientele as Athens faced the looming threat of war with Sparta.
Within several generations, red-figure ceramics were also made in the modern regions of Puglia, Sicily, and Campania. Although these vases stem from Athenian roots, their shapes and iconography changed significantly in the multicultural melting pot of Magna Graecia, offering us fascinating insights into societal practices and belief systems—especially those of the Italic communities that so frequently purchased them—that are not documented in the surviving literary and epigraphic record.
Image: Greek, South Italian, Apulian, Attributed to the Underworld Painter, Monumental Hydria (detail), circa 330–310 BCE, terracotta, red-figure ceramic with added white paint, H. 31 × Max. diam. 18 1/4 in., Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolin
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2110 Blue Ridge Rd., Raleigh, NC, United States, North Carolina 27607
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