Hands at Work in Magna Graecia : the Amykos Painter and His Workshop

Symposium "New Developments in South Italian Archaeology The Contexts of Apulian and Lucanian pottery", University of Cincinnati Classics Dept, 12-14 novembre 2009; actes à paraître.In the vast universe of South Italian pottery, the factual informations on the composition and on the localization of the red-figured workshops are scarce; two vase-painters only, Asteas and Python, signed their name, and are considered with reasonable probability to have been established at Paestum. The other mostly owe their existence and identity to Trendall's stylistic constructions and conventional names . Among the most important of them, both for the volume of his production and for his role in the development of Early South Italian red-figure, is the Amykos painter, named from the scene on a fine hydria in the Cabinet des Médailles, Paris. Fragments attributed to his hand have been discovered in 1973 in the archaeological excavations of the Metaponto kerameikos, confirmating thus him as working in this city, as were a little later the Dolon or Creusa Painters. But to cross efficiently these archeaological data with the stylistic data, one has to re-evaluate the painter's production as determinated by A.D.Trendall