The Meleager Painter was an
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
vase painter of the
Attic red-figure
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 va ...
style. He was active in the first third of the 4th century BC. The Meleager Painter followed a tradition started by a group of slightly earlier artists, such as the
Mikion Painter. He is probably the most important painter of his generation. He painted a wide variety of vase shapes, including even ''
kylikes'', a rarity among his contemporaries.
His conventional name is derived from several vases depicting hunters, including
Atalante and her lover
Meleagros. Colonette ''kraters'' and bell ''kraters'' by him normally bear
Dionysiac motifs. Like other painters of his time, he liked to paint figures wearing oriental garb. The ''
tondos'' inside his ''kylikes'' are often framed by wreaths. They mostly depict groups of deities or individual gods. The outsides of ''kylikes'' and the paintings on the backs of other vases by him are often of inferior quality.
Bibliography
*
John D. Beazley. ''Attic Red Figure Vase Painters''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
*
John Boardman. ''Rotfigurige Vasen aus Athen. Die klassische Zeit'', Philipp von Zabern, Mainz, 1991 (Kulturgeschichte der Antiken Welt, Band 48), besonders, p. 176 .
External links
Works at the Metropolitan Museum of ArtWorks at the Getty Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meleager Painter
4th-century BC deaths
Ancient Greek vase painters
Anonymous artists of antiquity
People from Attica
Year of birth unknown