Amasis was an ancient
Attic
An attic (sometimes referred to as a '' loft'') is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building; an attic may also be called a ''sky parlor'' or a garret. Because attics fill the space between the ceiling of the ...
potter, active in
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
between 560/550 and 530/520 BC.
Amasis’s pottery workshop also employed a well-known painter, who is conventionally named the
Amasis Painter
The Amasis Painter (active around 550–510 BC in Athens) was an ancient Greek vase painter who worked in the black-figure technique. He owes his name to the signature of the potter Amasis ("Amasis made me"), who signed twelve works painted by t ...
after the potter, and generally considered one of the best Archaic vase painters. His works are mostly
black-figure
Black-figure pottery painting, also known as the black-figure style or black-figure ceramic ( grc, , }), is one of the styles of painting on antique Greek vases. It was especially common between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE, although there are ...
, but some
red-figure vase painting
Red-figure vase painting is one of the most important styles of figural Greek vase painting.
It developed in Athens around 520 BCE and remained in use until the late 3rd century BCE. It replaced the previously dominant style of black-figure v ...
s by him do occur. He and
Exekias
Exekias ( grc, Ἐξηκίας, ''Exēkías'') was an ancient Greek vase painter and potter who was active in Athens between roughly 545 BC and 530 BC. Exekias worked mainly in the black-figure technique, which involved the painting of scen ...
produced the first major painted
amphora
An amphora (; grc, ἀμφορεύς, ''amphoreús''; English plural: amphorae or amphoras) is a type of container with a pointed bottom and characteristic shape and size which fit tightly (and therefore safely) against each other in storag ...
e with a narrative image on front and back, respectively.
Famous works:
* Amphora: ''Satyrs harvesting grapes'' (Würzburg,
Martin-von-Wagner-Museum)
* Amphora: ''Dionysos with a kantharos and youths with slain hares and foxes'' (Munich,
Staatliche Antikensammlungen
The Staatliche Antikensammlungen (, ''State Collections of Antiquities'') is a museum in Munich's Kunstareal holding Bavaria's collections of antiquities from Greece, Etruria and Rome, though the sculpture collection is located in the opposite Gly ...
)
Bibliography
*
John D. Beazley
Sir John Davidson Beazley, (; 13 September 1885 – 6 May 1970) was a British classical archaeologist and art historian, known for his classification of Attic vases by artistic style. He was Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at the Un ...
: ''Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters'', Oxford 1956
*
Dietrich von Bothmer: ''The Amasis Painter and his world. Vase-painting in 6th century B.C. Athens''. Malibu, Calif., J. Paul Getty Museum 1985. ,
* ''Papers on the Amasis painter and his world''. Colloquium sponsored by the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities and symposium sponsored by the J. Paul Getty Museum. Malibu, Calif., J. Paul Getty Museum 1987.
* Hans Peter Isler: ''Der Töpfer Amasis und der Amasis-Maler. Bemerkungen zur Chronologie und zur Person'', in: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 109 (1994) p. 93-114.
*
Heide Mommsen: ''Aμασις μεπoιεσεν. Beobachtungen zum Töpfer Amasis'', In: Athenian potters and painters. The conference proceedings (Oxford 1997) p. 17-34.
Ancient Greek potters
{{AncientGreece-bio-stub