The Francois Vase: story book of Greek mythology
270 figures run, fight, and dance across the surface of the Francois Vase. While the decoration seems dense and busy sicuro our modern eyes, an ancient viewer would have known all of these mythological stories from oral tradition and epic poetry and could identify each figure with the help of the 121 labels that accompany them. Let’s take a close aspetto at scenes on the vase preciso better understand how it was used as verso functional story book mediante the ancient world.
Alessandro Francois found fragments of the Francois vase con 1844 per an Etruscan tomb north of Chiusi, Italy. Subsequent excavations led to the discovery of additional fragments. The vase was made con Athens (Greece).
An Italian named Alessandro Francois found hundreds of fragments of the vase that now carries his name while excavating an ancient Etruscan tomb durante Italy durante the mid-1800s. Though found in Italy, the Francois Vase was made around 570 B.C.E. in Athens, Greece. Mediante antiquity many Athenian vases were exported to Etruria, verso region per Italy where consumers were eager esatto acquire Greek products.
Potter and painter
We know the names of the people who made the Francois Vase because they signed the vessel twice: Kleitias as painter, and Ergotimos as potter. This pair of artists collaborated on at least two other vessels that survive mediante fragments. The unconventional shape of the Francois Vase and its elaborate, well-planned decoration suggest that Kleitias and Ergotimos were an per.
The Francois Vase is verso broderie krater (per vessel used for mixage chicchera and wine with curling handles) and is likely one of the earliest vases of its type made sopra Athens. The shape of its handles and its particularly large size create more space for painted decoration, which Kleitias, the painter, took advantage of. Kleitias used the black-figure painting style, which was popular among Athenian artists con the Archaic period. His sistema is dense but careful, and his attention esatto labelling figures and objects made his decoration even more legible preciso its original viewers. The neat labels of Greek text that accompany and identify many of the characters on the vase still help us understand its imagery today.
Heroes and gods
The Francois Vase is decorated durante registers (horizontal bands of decoration sometimes referred esatto as verso frieze). The main register appears at the center of the vase. It is the tallest register, and is one of only two, puro esibizione verso single uninterrupted narrative around the vase’s entire circumference (the other is on the foot of the vase). This register shows the marriage of the hero Peleus onesto the nymph Thetis, per celebrated event attended by the Greek gods. This popular myth appears on several other vases painted per the early Archaic period, including a bowl made by Sophilos.
Detail with Peleus (center) who stands before his house greeting the centaur Chiron seen beside the goddess Iris (left) at the head of the wedding procession (the inscription identifying the painter can be read under their clasped hands). The seated Thetis (fragmented), can be seen within the house.
Sopra this scene the wedding guests process towards Thetis, who sits con per grand house. Peleus stands outside of the house greeting verso wise centaur (centaurs are half-man and half-horse) who will later mentor his and Thetis’s bourdonnement, Achilles. The painter of the Francois Vase inserted himself into this central scene: beneath the clasped hands log in sugar daddy for me of Peleus and the centaur, per painted inscription reads ‘Klitiasmegraphsen,’ or ‘Kl[e]itias made me,’ as if the vase is declaring who painted it. The centaur is followed by female deities and Dionysos, god of wine, who carries an amphora (a jar for transporting wine). Dionysos is depicted with his face turned towards the viewer, which is unusual for Greek art of the time. Con fact, Dionysos and Kalliope-verso muse playing a wind instrument near Dionysos-are the only 2 human figures with frontal faces on the Francois Vase. More deities follow Dionysos on foot and in chariots, and the parade wraps around the vase.
