The Arkesilas Painter was a Laconian

vase painter Ancient Greek pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it (over 100,000 painted vases are recorded in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum), it has ex ...

active around 560 BC. He is considered one of the five great vase painters of

Sparta Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referre ...

His conventional name is derived from his

name vase In classical archaeology, a name vase is a specific "vase"In the study of ancient Greek pottery a "vase" is a general term covering all pottery shapes. whose painter's name is unknown but whose workshop style has been identified. The painter is co ...

, the so-called Arkesilas Cup, a '' kylix'' now on display at the

Cabinet des médailles The BnF Museum or Museum of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, formerly known as the Cabinet des Médailles, is a significant art and history museum in Paris. It displays collections of the ''Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques ...

of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The vessel, found at

Vulci Vulci or Volci ( Etruscan: ''Velch'' or ''Velx'', depending on the romanization used) was a rich Etruscan city in what is now northern Lazio, central Italy. As George Dennis wrote, "Vulci is a city whose very name... was scarcely remembered, b ...

, depicts Arkesilaos II, King of Cyrene, watching his subjects packing and weighing trade goods. It is a singular motif in ancient Greek art, and one of very few vase painting depicting recognisable historical figures. Along with a further painting by the artist which depicts the

nymph A nymph ( grc, νύμφη, nýmphē, el, script=Latn, nímfi, label= Modern Greek; , ) in ancient Greek folklore is a minor female nature deity. Different from Greek goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as personifications of nature, are ...

Kyrene wrestling a lion, it led to the original suggestion that the artist was active in

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

, but later excavations in Laconia proved that notion to be false. Another of his vases depicts women, their skin indicated by white paint. This technique, typical of

Corinthian Corinthian or Corinthians may refer to: *Several Pauline epistles, books of the New Testament of the Bible: **First Epistle to the Corinthians **Second Epistle to the Corinthians **Third Epistle to the Corinthians (Orthodox) *A demonym relating to ...

and Attic vase painting, is not otherwise known from Laconian workshops. A similar image shows

Herakles Heracles ( ; grc-gre, Ἡρακλῆς, , glory/fame of Hera), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive ...

, apparently fighting two amazons. Their faces are white, their legs not visible. The Arkesilas Painter primarily painted cups. He mainly painted symposion scenes and images from

Greek mythology A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities ...

. The latter are dominated by depictions of

, the amazons,

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...

and

Prometheus In Greek mythology, Prometheus (; , , possibly meaning " forethought")Smith"Prometheus". is a Titan god of fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, kn ...

. The latter two figures occur together on a single vase.In the

Museo Gregoriano Etrusco The Vatican Museums ( it, Musei Vaticani; la, Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of ...

Vatican Museums The Vatican Museums ( it, Musei Vaticani; la, Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of ...

, Inv 16592, found at

Cerveteri Cerveteri () is a town and '' comune'' of northern Lazio in the region of the Metropolitan City of Rome. Known by the ancient Romans as Caere, and previously by the Etruscans as Caisra or Cisra, and as Agylla (or ) by the Greeks, its modern na ...

, see Stibbe p. 171f. Apart from figural painting, he also ascribed vases bearing merely ornamental decoration. His drawing style is precise and lively. He was identified, as one of the first known Laconian vase painters, in 1934, by Eugene Numa Lane. His early work was originally falsely attributed to the then so-called "Hephaistos Painter", now known as the Boreades Painter de.

Bibliography

* John Boardman: ''Early Greek Vase Painting''. Thames and Hudson, London 1998 . 11th to 6th Century BC. A Handbook, Thames and Hudson, London 1998 (World of Art), pp. 185–188, . *

Thomas Mannack Thomas Mannack (born in 1958) is a German classical archaeologist. Mannack obtained his Doctorate in 1992 with at the University of Kiel. The thema of his dissertation was ''Beazleys spätere und späteste Manieristen''. He is a specialist in ...

: ''Griechische Vasenmalerei. Eine Einführung''. Theiss, Stuttgart 2002, , . * Matthis Steinhart: Arkesilas-Maler, In: Der Neue Pauly, V.2., p. 8. * Conrad M. Stibbe: ''Das andere Sparta''. von Zabern, Mainz 1996 (Kulturgeschichte der Antiken Welt, Vol. 65), pp. 163–203, .

References

External links

* {{Authority control Ancient Greek vase painters