Vase Painter (c.490 BC – c.400 BC)
If hypothetically there was an art exhibition being held in the museum of art in Berlin, Germany, entitled “The Berlin Painter”, most of us would probably think of a famous German painter from the Renaissance who flourished in Berlin by producing phenomenal oil paintings. This, however, is far from the truth. The Berlin Painter is not an Albrecht Durer or a Caspar Friedrich; he was not even German. Instead, he was an ancient Greek vase painter from the time of the Golden Age of Pericles, known conventionally as the Berlin Painter.
The name was given by British classicist and historian Sir John Beazley, who, in 1911, while studying one of his amphorae in the Museum of Berlin, noticed the pattern of stylistic traits of the painter that he had seen in other vases and fragments. The painter, who was conventionally named after the city where his amphora was found, was one of the most prolific and influential vase painters of antiquity, who flourished in Athens. He had the habit of not signing his name on his works and as a result, nothing is known about him, besides his collection of 330 surviving vases and their fragments found throughout the whole Mediterranean, from Southern Italy and Etruria to Libya, Rhodes and Crimea.
The Berlin Painter is considered worldwide as the most gifted and charismatic pottery artist of the ancient world, the man who perfected and disseminated the red-figure vase painting in Southern Europe. The one responsible for depicting representations of the Divine in a manner completely different from his predecessors; his figures were portrayed with elegancy, detail, great symmetry and extraordinary realism, with themes borrowed primarily from mythology. Youth and spring are common depictions. According to Beazley, there is nothing lacking and nothing in hyperbole; all in moderation (μέτρον ἄριστον). Some scholars even believe that he was also the ceramicist who built the pottery.
Among the Berlin Painter’s most famous paintings, which we all have admired, are Dionysos holding a kantharos, Hermes, the Satyr and the hind, which is the vase found in the Museum of Berlin, the Discus Thrower, Ganymedes with cockerel and hoop, found in the Louvre Museum, Europe and the Bull (Zeus), Apollo and the winged tripod, Achilles and Penthesellia, Nike with lyre, the Panathenaic amphora of the running athletes, Perseus and Medusa, The Lioness, Goddess Athena, Zeus holding thunder and many other paintings.
Even though his true name remains a mystery, after nearly 2500 years of anonymity, the Berlin Painter earned the position in history that he deserved. Today, 30 of his paintings decorate the Greek museums, the remaining 300 scattered throughout the museums of Europe, providing the visitors there with a glimpse of the world 2500 years ago through a window to the past.
Bibliography
- The Berlin Painter and His World: Athenian Vase-Painting in the Early Fifth Century B.C.’ opens March 4. Princeton University Art Museum. Princeton.edu. Web. September 28, 2016. Retrieved on February 28, 2017.
- Ποιος ήταν ο ζωγράφος του Βερολίνου; Archaeology Newsroom. Archaiologia.gr. Web. Retrieved on March 1, 2017.
