The first discoveries of vases signed by Euphronios, and of one vase apparently referring to him, were made during or shortly after 1828, at the Etruscan site of Vulci. Located in what is now the region of Lazio, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Rome, Vulci was once among the prime centres of Etruria. In its heyday, around 500 BC (before Rome’s expansion brought an end, one by one, to the Etruscan cities), Vulci enjoyed prosperous contact with the wider Mediterranean, to judge by the contents of its extensive cemeteries. Taken over by the Romans, the site became malarial in antiquity, and largely depopulated. It was semi-desolate agricultural land belonging to the Papal States when, in the early nineteenth century, it was made part of a settlement with Lucien Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon. The first notice of the ancient tombs came when Lucien’s ploughmen found the soil collapsing beneath them. Lucien, with some previous experience as an ‘archaeologist’ – his further Italian properties included the remains of Cicero’s villa at Tusculum – instigated excavations. ‘Clearance’ might be a better term for what took place at Vulci. The quantity of objects within the tombs was phenomenal; and in particular, the proportion of Greek painted vases among these objects was unprecedented.

As hundreds, eventually thousands, of such vases emerged from the site, antiquarians sought to comprehend various aspects of the historical process whereby images of recognizably Greek iconographic pedigree – showing episodes of Homeric epic, for example, or figures from the Olympian pantheon – along with inscriptions clearly written in ancient Greek – came to be deposited in Etruscan graves. Prince Lucien stoutly asserted that the workmanship was local. Learned observers were more cautious. Among them was Eduard Gerhard, who as founder of an archaeological society at Rome endeavoured to catalogue the Vulci finds before they were dispersed.1 Gerhard thought there must have been some sort of colonial outpost of Greeks, specifically Athenians, at Vulci. So it is that our first mention of Euphronios in modern scholarship is as a ‘vasellaio volcente’, a ‘Vulcian potter’. Two vases signed by Euphronios from Vulci had been noted by Gerhard, and he was soon afterwards able to add a third (now lost), retrieved from Bomarzo, in the Viterbo area.

Given the notoriety attached to our ‘million-dollar vase’ by Euphronios, it is interesting to note that when Lucien Bonaparte began offering his collection for auction – at Paris, in the mid-1830s, when he needed ready cash – a kylix by Euphronios, showing Herakles taking the cattle of Geryon, was offered at a minimum price of 8,000 francs, remarkably high at the time. It did not make that figure then, but was subsequently acquired for King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and now belongs to the Munich Antikensammlungen (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8 Drawings of a kylix signed (on the foot) by Euphronios; found at Vulci, in about 1830. The rider on the cup’s interior is inscribed HO PA[I]S LEAGROS (‘the boy Leagros’) (see p. 95). ‘Type B’ shape, H 15.9 cm (6.3 in). Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen 8704.

after FR pl. 22.

No one today believes that Euphronios was Etruscan, nor even an immigrant who came to Etruria and settled there (as certain Greek craftsmen demonstrably did, from perhaps as early as the mid-seventh century BC). The academic clarification of Euphronios as an artist, however, took several decades to establish. Further pieces bearing the name of Euphronios were reported from Vulci, also from Cerveteri and Tarquinia: a total of nine vases with the signature formed the basis of a dissertation submitted to the University of Vienna by Wilhelm Klein, published first in 1879 and revised in 1886. Klein’s work was saluted (by Oxford’s Percy Gardner) as the first ‘scientific study of vases’, attempting stylistic analysis of particular exponents of the red-figure technique. It failed, however, to define Euphronios convincingly as a ‘master’. A rival scholar, Adolf Furtwängler, whose eye for distinctions among painters had been trained by producing a descriptive catalogue of the collection of Greek vases at Berlin, censured Klein for indulging ‘Euphronios-Phantasien’. For his part, Furtwängler was able to argue convincingly that a large krater in Arezzo (Fig. 9), which had been known since at least the early eighteenth century, could be counted as a work by Euphronios – even though there was no signature.

The Athenian credentials of Euphronios (and other late-archaic vase-painters) were confirmed in 1882, when archaeological investigations upon the Acropolis of Athens, close by to the Parthenon, yielded plentiful fragments of vessels that must have been used for festivals and dedications in the years before the Persian occupation of Athens in 480 BC – including the remains of the magnificent ‘parade cup’ by Euphronios (Fig. 10). The debris of material either broken during that occupation and buried soon after, or else buried before the Persians encroached, includes numerous statues and pieces of temple sculpture – and so makes a definable visual ‘city of images’ in which to locate our artist.

Fig. 9 Drawings of a volute-krater attributed to Euphronios, showing Herakles and Telamon in combat with the Amazons. The vase appears in Thomas Dempster’s De Etruria regali of 1723 (Vol. 1, Fig. 19). H 59.5 cm (23.4 in). Arezzo, Museo Archeologico 1465.

after FR pl. 61.

Fig. 10 Fragment of a kylix from the Athenian Acropolis, attributed to Euphronios (and with part of his signature?), as originally published. Peleus takes the hand of his bride, Thetis, in a wedding procession with Olympian deities. Traces of gilded clay used for jewellery and divine trappings. The cup is now reconstructed, with a diameter of 44.5 cm (17.5 in). Athens, National Archaeological Museum 15214.

after Graef & Langlotz, Die antiken Vasen von der Akropolis zu Athen (Berlin 1925), pl. 8.

Furtwängler’s attribution of the Arezzo krater (hedged with some telling caveats regarding the painter’s identity) heralded a new method of studying Greek vases. Klein and others had shown interest in artists’ signatures; broadly speaking, however, the principal interest had so far been focused upon the pictorial subject of a vase. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, a discipline emerged that was more concerned with defining the creators of the images. An Italian savant, Giovanni Morelli, developed a technique of ‘scientific connoisseurship’ to decide questions of attribution in the field of Italian Renaissance painting. Essentially this technique entailed identifying the ‘hand’ responsible for a figurative picture not so much from its overall effect, but rather from clues contained in its subsidiary details. The rendering of minor bodily parts, such as earlobes and fingernails, was of especial interest to Morelli (who had trained as an anatomist). His claim was that an artist naturally tended to represent these unobtrusive components of a figure cursively, even thoughtlessly – or at least with less conscious effort relative to the ‘main lines’ of aspect and character. The methodological similarity between Morelli’s approach and Freudian psychoanalysis was noted by Sigmund Freud himself; historians like also to make a connection with the sort of microscopic scrutiny made famous by fictional detectives (notably Sherlock Holmes). Furtwängler had noticed that Euphronios was an artist whose forte lay in finesse of detail. Another German scholar, Paul Hartwig, had shown how attributions of anonymous Greek vases could be made by close observation of such detail. The credit for extending ‘Morellian’ analysis into the world of ancient vase-painting, however, lies with J. D. Beazley – who, although he did not live to see the Sarpedon krater, is inseparable from its modern story (see p. 23). Beazley began to scrutinize Greek vases while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford, and published his first list of attributions in 1910. He knew about Morelli’s technique, and eventually met Morelli’s celebrated disciple in the field of Italian ‘Old Master’ paintings, Bernard Berenson. ‘However obscure he may be, the artist cannot escape detection if only sufficiently delicate tests be applied.’ Beazley developed his own ways of deploying this ‘Morellian’ principle (Fig. 11). He did not scorn photographs, but he prized direct inspection of a vase, not only handling it, but also ‘reliving’ its lines of draughtsmanship – either by pencil drawings in a notebook, or else copying details by means of flimsy tracing-paper laid upon the vase (see Fig. 17).

Fig. 11 J.D. Beazley (1885–1970) at work in Italy, c.1960.

Image from the Beazley Archive, courtesy of the Classical Art Research Centre, University of Oxford.

Style was paramount when it came to determining whose ‘hand’ was responsible for the images; signatures, though increasingly frequent on Athenian vases made after c.570 BC, could be misleading. The situation with Euphronios was complicated by the presence of two different verbs attached to his name. One signature declares Euphronios egraphsen, ‘Euphronios painted [this]’; the other, Euphronios epoiêsen, ‘Euphronios made [this]’. The verbs imply respectively that a vessel shaped and fired by another potter was decorated by Euphronios; or that Euphronios did the shaping (‘throwing’) and firing of a vessel which was then painted by someone else. We see in the Sarpedon krater the former scenario: Euxitheos the potter, Euphronios the painter. (Euphronios is also known to have painted vases created by Kachrylion as potter: judged to be early works, including the Sarpedon cup.) As for the second scenario, it is demonstrated by the grand kylix currently exhibited near the Sarpedon krater in the Cerveteri museum (see Fig. 6): a piece turned on the wheel by Euphronios, then decorated by Onesimos – if that is the division of labour implied by epoiêsen and egraphsen.

It is likely that craftsmen at Athens were versatile in both skills. A workable hypothesis is that after several decades of activity as a painter, Euphronios turned to potting; and perhaps did so by necessity, because his eyesight was no longer sharp enough for fine brushwork. An inscribed marble base from the Acropolis records a dedication (probably of a bronze statue) by a potter (kerameus) named Euphronios: since this seems to be a vow to Athena in her divine aspect of providing health (hygeia), it may support such a theory, though the date assigned to the epigraphy (c.475 BC) does not quite fit a supposed turning-point in the artist’s career of c.500 BC.2 Nonetheless, the activity of Euphronios as potter has been calculated as extending until c.470 BC. The painters with whom he collaborated were Onesimos – also considered his pupil – the Antiphon Painter, and the Pistoxenos Painter.

Inherent in Beazley’s genealogy of painters is the assumption that there are ‘masters’ and ‘pupils’. From what we know of the organization of craft in ancient Greece, it seems likely that Euphronios would have started in a ceramic workshop as a young boy, perhaps assisting his father. If he was born c.535 BC (Beazley’s estimate), he could have been producing his own work by 520 BC. Stylistic affinities suggest an apprenticeship with one of the first generation of painters exploring the red-figure technique – plausibly the Andokides Painter, or Psiax. But this would not have been a system of personal tuition. There may have been something like a dozen employees in a single establishment, closely sharing space – and sharing the work. The fact that finished products were often signed by individuals as painters naturally encourages our notion that an Athenian pottery workshop was like a modern art school, giving creative spirits opportunities to express themselves. Beazley, raised in a period of fashionable respect for ‘the arts and crafts’, searched for traces of personality, even genius, among repeated marks of individualized style. Thus it happens that we have a ‘group’ exhibiting a collective stylistic identity, yet comprising a number of distinct protagonists. Beazley called them the ‘Pioneer Group’, because they were apparently united by a commitment to a technically adventurous mode of drawing, especially of the human figure (see p. 70). He distinguished a dozen or so different ‘hands’ within the group; prominent among those who signed their names were Euphronios, Euthymides and Phintias. Conceivably they were all employed in one small ‘factory’ (ergastêrion) located among other such in the northwestern district of ancient Athens known as Kerameis or Keramês – which gives rise to a ‘Potters’ Quarter’, the ‘Kerameikos’ (and thus our English word ‘ceramic’).

It was one of Beazley’s successors at Oxford, Martin Robertson, who wondered if Euphronios and Euthymides might have been brothers. Their names, respectively translating as ‘good sense’ and ‘good/cheerful spirit’, seem similar enough – and, as we shall see, there are possible signs of fraternal rivalry between them. It was Robertson, too, who liked to imagine a workshop with a certain seating-plan to the benches – ‘Hypsis by the side of Euthymides’, ‘Phintias in the middle’, ‘Smikros by the side of Euphronios’. These are affectionate speculations (from a man who was, as a teacher, the soul of gentility). But they cannot conceal a disquieting degree of incertitude about artistic identities here. (Tellingly, both in print and viva voce Robertson frequently used the phrase ‘I feel’ when allocating a vase to one painter or another.)

Beazley deployed various terms to signal a measure of doubt when it came to assigning a vase to a name – e.g. ‘close to’, ‘manner of’, ‘imitation of’ – along with various signals of proximity or influence, such as ‘group’, ‘kinship’, ‘school’, ‘circle’. He claimed these terms were not interchangeable, yet never thoroughly defined the nuances of difference, saying that it would be too tedious to do so – and he admitted that a certain amount of intuition was involved. Consequently, there are detractors, who regard this entire method as something of a dark art, or ‘society game’. Some archaeologists would say that it only serves the art market. One problem it generates is sometimes referred to as the ‘amico di Sandro’ syndrome – alluding back to the world of Italian Renaissance painters, and the notorious problem of separating the work of (Sandro) Botticelli from one of his (supposed) assistants or ‘friends’. We know that the Athenian pottery workshops were places of collective effort. What if several individuals collaborated on one vase, not only dividing ‘potting’ and ‘painting’, but subdividing the painting?

Anyone who consults Beazley’s catalogue of vases belonging to the Pioneer Group soon notices, beyond the initial impression of crisp Oxonian order, a quantity of loose ends and fuzzy edges – or (to be fair to Beazley) a certain amount of unfinished business. The studies of Klein and Furtwängler had already shown that Euphronios was not always easy to distinguish from his ‘fellows’, and these ‘fellows’ not always within the designated group: so, for example, experts admit that ‘early work’ signed by Euphronios shows stylistic traits that would have caused it to be attributed to a ‘non-Pioneer’ painter called Oltos – had it not been signed by Euphronios. A significant tally of vases gathered by Beazley under the title ‘The Pioneer Group: Sundry’ indicates the residual problem: ‘these vases belong to the Pioneer Group, but cannot be said to be by any of the painters described hitherto’ (ARV, 33). In other words, group identity can conceal its individual members. And when one painter – Hypsis – has just two surviving vases to his name, we may be forgiven for worrying about what became of his career within the group.

There is of course the danger that we impose upon antiquity a model of art history that we know from modern times, and project our Athenian ‘Pioneers’ of 2,500 years ago as if they were the ‘Pre-Raphaelites’, ‘Wiener Werkstatt’ or ‘Fauves’ of their time. This author does not dissent from the claim that a certain Euphronios, however humble his medium and métier, shows the technical ability, imaginative range and grandeur of vision that we associate with all ‘great artists’. The minor issue that arises regarding his oeuvre is how far this Euphronios can be distinguished from one of the other Pioneers in particular, namely ‘Smikros’. That name is put in inverted commas because it sounds very much like a nickname – translating as ‘the small one’, ‘Tiny’ or ‘Titch’. It was not uncommon, as a nickname, in ancient Athens: but does it really denote another painter? For there is an observable overlap between the diagnostic styles associated with Euphronios and ‘Smikros’ – and variation of judgement, as to whether ‘Smikros’ should be classified as an incompetent copycat or a careful disciple.3

A glance at one of the vases attributed to ‘Smikros’ reveals the dilemma of identification (Fig. 12). Whoever painted it shows ‘insider knowledge’ of the Pioneer Group: among several scenes of homoerotic courtship, there is one in which a figure labelled ‘Euphronios’ makes advances towards a nervous-looking lad with the nearby inscription ‘Leagros kalos’ (see p. 95). Facial features around the vase incline to caricature, and an athlete scratching his backside with a strigil seems flagrantly to parody the ‘new drawing’ which earns the Pioneers their modern status. Is this some kind of joke?

Fig. 12 Psykter attributed to ‘Smikros’, decorated with a gymnasium scene. A figure labelled ‘Andriskos’ (‘Little chap’) is approached by a slightly older boy; to the right of them, an athlete (‘Ambrosios’, ) gesticulates with his right arm while ‘rubbing down’ with his left. H 33 cm (13 in). Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 82.AE.53.

Courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

The answer is ‘quite possibly, yes’. If so, where does it leave us? The vase is attributed to ‘Smikros’ because, while showing ‘Euphronian’ traits, it lacks the anatomical care and general attention to detail associated with Euphronios. But what if Euphronios designed it in a spirit of careless levity, encompassing the socially absurd notion that he, a mere craftsman, could make amorous overtures to an aristocrat such as Leagros – surely his social superior, and possibly his employer? Since the vase was very likely intended to serve an Athenian drinking-party, such levity would not be inappropriate; if, on the other hand, it was always destined as a ‘bespoke’ export to the faraway Etruscans, then what would those barbarians care?

A sophisticated solution to the problem is the proposal, from Guy Hedreen, that Euphronios used ‘Smikros’ as a sort of artistic alter ego. ‘Smikros’ may be careful, he may be careless – either way, ‘Smikros’ is the sobriquet of a painter enjoying the poetic licence of a self-conscious, self-effacing persona. A more basic possible explanation is that Euphronios, being slight of stature, was nicknamed ‘Smikros’, and occasionally used that nickname (rather as Paul Gauguin would sometimes sign himself as ‘Pego’ instead of ‘P. Gauguin’). Ultimately, perhaps, it does not matter very much: in any case, for present purposes, we shall consider at least one vase attributed to ‘Smikros’ as typifying (if derivatively) the style of Euphronios (see Figs. 19 and 20). It may be significant that when Euphronios depicts a figure named ‘Smikros’ on a symposium couch, that figure looks the epitome of handsome manhood (see Fig. 3): conceivably a (self-flattering) self-portrait?

Euphronios is one of the few ancient Greek vase-painters to have been given (c.1990) the honour of an international ‘one-man show’. The accompanying catalogues from that exhibition – staged, with variations of content, in Paris, Berlin and Arezzo – constitute a valuable resource for grasping the painter’s style. (Beazley’s list of works, though later amplified by the creation of an online archive in his name, are forbiddingly unillustrated.) The salient features of that style are summarized here, under two headings: first, according to various aspects of pictorial technique, and second, by reference to the representation of human anatomy. The latter category may seem strange, as an index of style – but it has become something of a tradition in the study of Greek art, especially of Greek art as it changes from ‘archaic’ to ‘classical’ (e.g. the development of the kouros statue-type) – and there are reasons, as we shall see, for believing that naturalistic accuracy was a criterion of artistic success in Athens at the time.

Following the example of Psiax, Euphronios played with the medium of painting vases in the ‘reserved’ method of red-figure – which essentially involved blocking out a background in black, then using a fine brush and diluted dark glaze to add ‘interior’ detail. One early work (the Sarpedon kylix) allows, painstakingly, for inscriptions to be reserved, instead of being added later with red or purple paint (the usual way). By the 520s BC, the black-figure technique – which entailed painting ‘silhouettes’ of black figures upon a buff terracotta background, then adding detail by scratching on the figures with a sort of stylus – had largely passed from favour. Yet it continued to be used by certain Athenian workshops, and for certain types of vase, such as the prize-amphorae awarded at the Panathenaic Games: Euphronios probably painted some of these.4 He knew about gilding (see Fig. 10), and he left some delicate examples of painting in semi-outline upon a white background. Working perhaps as potter and painter combined, he also exploited the orange-red gloss finish known as ‘coral red’ or ‘intentional red’.

Work in red-figure is normally referred to as ‘painting’. But really it was more like drawing, or print-making, being essentially linear, with little or no tonal gradation, and using a very restricted ‘palette’ of colours (a black to sepia glaze, sometimes applied ‘neat’ as a relief line, sometimes diluted; reddish or purple paint, sparingly applied; occasionally some added white). For a vase such as the Sarpedon krater, Euphronios would have drawn (with a fine brush) outlines of the figures, and followed those outlines where they continue naturally within the ‘interior’ space – so, for example, Sarpedon’s admirable ‘iliac crest’ – the ridge of muscle bulging at the top of the thighs and running down into the groin – fluently makes the transition from outline to inner detail. Anyone who examines the vase closely will notice that, within the compartments of abdominal muscle, Euphronios has very faintly added some shading, to give his hero some ‘bulk’. But mostly the artist relies on line.

Reliance upon line can seem simple, even easy – like the mature drawing-style of Matisse. But it requires a very sure touch. Mistakes are not easily rectified, and reconsiderations are all too apparent. Like other red-figure painters, Euphronios will have sketched a basic design upon the surface of a vase before the clay was entirely dry, using something like a piece of sharpened charcoal. After that, there was little margin for error. What we term ‘subsidiary decoration’ – the ornaments that generally frame or fringe the figured scenes – could have been delegated to a junior assistant. Euphronios rarely departs from various arrangements of scrolls and palmettes, which in the painter’s early work may also occupy an independent space (e.g. the interior of the Sarpedon kylix). Lotus-buds also appear. Arguably, more attention should be paid to these patterns – the ways in which they complement the tectonics of the vase, for example, and their integration with the purpose of the vessel – such as a continuous garland of schematized vine-leaves running just below the rim of a wine-mixing bowl (see Fig. 1). Our focus upon the figure style is justified primarily by the historical attention given to figures as conduits of individualized style.

Fig. 13 Drawing of one side of a calyx-krater signed by Euphronios, from Cerveteri, c.515 BC. The other side of the vase shows an apparently unrelated scene of musical contest. H of krater 44.8 cm (17.6 in). Paris, Louvre G 103.

after FR pl. 92.

In that respect, further justification perhaps ought to be claimed here for the use of modern drawings derived from vases – in particular those produced in the early twentieth century by Karl Reichhold. In a sense, these are distortions, effectively flattening compositions created for and upon a curved surface. But since it is impossible to photograph or view a vase without performing some act of revolution or circumnavigation, the compromise seems necessary – and Reichhold was as faithful to original detail as any draughtsman could be. It is thanks to his ‘unfolding’ of one side of a krater in the Louvre that we are able to grasp the compositional method characteristic of Euphronios (Fig. 13); a natural view of the vase cannot be sufficient.

Fig. 14 Photographic detail of the calyx-krater shown in Fig. 13: Herakles and Antaios.

The subject, typically, is ambitious, for such a relatively small space. Herakles, the Greek strongman par excellence, is shown confronting the murderous Libyan giant Antaios. Flanking female onlookers help to calibrate the relative enormity of the contenders, firmly braced against each other. Herakles is looking for the grip that will enable him to lift Antaios off the ground, thereby depriving the giant of the power he derives from Mother Earth (if that is the version of the story Euphronios intends). The heads of the opponents form the apex of a triangle in the centre of the scene. Striations of muscle in their bodies indicate that both wrestlers are equally ‘ripped’. But the posture of Antaios is twisted – his right leg bent double, with a foot appearing behind his lower back – while Herakles, applying a complex armlock, squeezing fingers into flesh, is steadily crouched. The respective expressions, so closely juxtaposed, are telling: the Libyan frowning, head tilted, eyeballs rolling, lips parted, tongue protruding – about to lose consciousness; in marked pathognomic contrast to the resolute composure of Herakles. The pitted concentration of the two hulks is only heightened by the dynamic motion of the two attendant females – ‘attendant’, yet moving rapidly away while gesticulating back to the contest. Their motion/emotion is indicated by folds of drapery, some of it awry – yet their essential mirror-symmetry also makes a neat containing frame, which the artist caps horizontally by adding, in capitals, his epigraphic seal: EUPHRONIOS EGRAPHSEN.

The hair and beard of Antaios are done in a light wash, deliberately messy. The coiffure of Herakles, by comparison, is a mass of tidy curls, for which Euphronios deploys another of his artistic tricks: the use of white points, or minuscule relief-dots of clay, to show volume, or to catch highlights on a bunch of grapes. The same detail shows a further characteristic of his style. Like other late-archaic painters, Euphronios is content to show an eye in profile as if it were an eye front-on. But he is unusual in adding eyelashes. Not all of his figures have them – but heroes and deities seem specially favoured, among them of course Sarpedon (see Fig. 78). (Interestingly, ‘Smikros’ gives eyelashes to just one figure on his Getty vase – the precious Leagros.)

Francophone scholars have invoked the word écorché with regard to certain renditions of male muscle structure by Euphronios. Literally the term means ‘flayed’; in the Western art tradition, it evokes the practice of drawing either directly from dissected bodies (as practised by Leonardo da Vinci), or (more often) using a three-dimensional model, made of wax or some other material. Curator François Villard, analysing fragments of an amphora in the Louvre that depicted on one side a javelin-thrower, on the other a discobolus, wondered if Euphronios had studied anatomy, in anticipation of Leonardo, directly from a corpse (‘une observation attentive du cadavre’).5 Villard’s reasoning was that on these and other figures Euphronios indicated the so-called linea alba – the fibrous connective tissue that runs vertically between the abdominal muscles, down to the pubic area; and this could only be known by dissection. In fact, the full extent of the linea alba may be superficially visible on bodies that are extremely ‘toned’ (and on pregnant women), so there is no need to conjure up the (historically improbable) notion of an ancient vase-painter conducting a post-mortem investigation. Still, the point remains that Euphronios took an ‘ostentatious pride in his knowledge of human anatomy’ – to the extent that he shows calf muscles even when a figure (e.g. Sarpedon) is wearing greaves, i.e. the pieces of armour designed to cover and protect the lower leg.

Euphronios did not dissect – but he must have observed. How directly he was able to observe is a question we shall address presently; in any case, it seems that the artist was so proud of his observations that he sometimes lost sight of the imperative to render anthropomorphic forms ‘naturalistically’. So Sarpedon’s lower legs, for all that they are greaved, show both a frontal and sideways view – frontal knee and tibia, yet sideways peroneal muscle (within greave). A similar peculiarity of markings may be observed in the arms of the figure labelled ‘Smikros’ on the Munich krater (see Fig. 3), where the painter has introduced a forearm muscle quite foreign to normal anatomy. The explanation is that a side-on view has been conflated with the front-on view – which of course could easily happen, if (as is likely) Euphronios had no models actually holding a fixed pose for him.

It is facetious to say that women, anatomically, were an enigma to Euphronios. (As an incidental matter of social reality: if the artist had a wife, he may not often have seen her unclothed, in the gender-segregated space that was the Greek house.) ‘Topless’ females elicit, again, a compromise of side-on and front-on perspective, at least with regard to their breasts (see Fig. 23). Otherwise, however, the economy of line that Euphronios shows in his mature work serves equally well for men and women, youths and adults, deities and mortals, heroes and monsters.

Readers may be wondering, at this point, whether there is one invariable anatomical mannerism by which they might recognize the artist. That is, after all, the basis for the Morellian method of attribution. Alas, no single clue or body part can be supplied – not even the ear, which on figures within the signed work of Euphronios is hardly ever exactly the same in shape or execution. Hooks for clavicles, lunate curves for biceps, ankles marked with three short strokes triangles for toe-nails – there are some recurrent features, indeed, but none of them alone constitutes a failsafe attestation of Euphronios. So – as Beazley more or less admitted – a degree of subjective judgement is ultimately required. And an important part of that judgement lies in a sensibility towards overall composition in the signed works, and a sensibility towards the subjects of those compositions. Regardless of minor details, Euphronios found a style, and a mode of composition, that enabled him to broach grand themes of drama and epic – themes that would suit large-scale painting well enough, but required skill and distillation if they were to fit upon a vase. At the same time, he was not above the trivial ‘banter’ of a collective workplace, with all its little rivalries (perhaps some sibling rivalry too); nor aloof from the gossip concerning his immediate clientele, some of them probably the gossip-generating ‘celebrities’ of the day. In the end, a biography of Euphronios remains impossible to construct. But traces of his personality are not entirely lost.

The Pioneers were literate, if erratic in their spelling (Phintias may give his name as Philtias, Phitias or Phintis). Several of the painters sometimes put meaningless Greek upon their vases – which for some scholars is a sign that these Athenian artists were aware of non-Greek clients abroad. If Euphronios and the others did not formally go to school, then somehow they became learned in mythology, and acquainted with the themes of epic and lyric poetry. They were unafraid to depict those violent scenes of myth which on stage would be devolved to some messenger’s report – Theseus stabbing the Minotaur, for instance, or the murder of Aegisthus. But Athenian vase-painters had already shown, long ago, that their thematic ‘reach’ extended to such mythography: witness Sophilos, one of the first black-figure artists to sign his name, or Kleitias and Ergotimos, creators of ‘the François Vase’ (see Fig. 30). What precisely, then, did ‘the Pioneers’ pioneer? Beazley’s summary reply would be: ‘the new drawing’.6 Alternatively, one could contrast the output of the Pioneers with other Athenian ceramic workshops of the late fifth century, such as the black-figure ‘Leafless Group’ – repetitious, uninscribed, iconographically unadventurous: commercialized dross.7 Before we attempt to define the Pioneer novelty as perceived by modern archaeologists, however, it seems wise to commence an exposition by citing two distinguished ancient intellectual sources.

Aristotle was active at Athens some two centuries after the Pioneers, but a line from some transcribed lectures he probably delivered at his Athenian school, the Lyceum, provides a starting-point: ‘We take pleasure in looking at careful likenesses of things which are objectively painful to regard, such as monstrous beasts, or dead bodies’ (Poetics 1448b). This dictum has obvious importance for the present study, since the Sarpedon krater so prominently shows the representation of a dead body; and there is an aesthetic significance of deriving ‘pleasure’ that deserves further exploration (see p. 226). Meanwhile it is worth stressing the phrase ‘careful likenesses’. ‘Careful’ in the Greek is êkribômenos, which could also be translated as ‘accurately executed’. But to understand what Aristotle means by that, we must refer in turn to his Athenian teacher, Plato.

A sentiment preserved in what survives of Plato’s dialogue, the Critias (datable to c.350 BC) indicates the critical sensibility of ancient viewers with regard to representations of the body. So far as artists attempt ‘the big picture’ – ‘the earth and mountains and rivers and forests and the great heavens, along with everything that exists and moves within’ – ‘we are content if an artist is able to convey them with just a suggestion of likeness’, because that matches our own impressionistic knowledge of such things. By contrast, ‘when a painter attempts a likeness of human form, we are quick to pass judgement upon any failure to produce an accurate rendition – because of our close acquaintance with the original model’ (Criti. 107). Naïve as this generalization now seems (and Plato intended it only as a philosophical analogy), it points us towards the possibility that a group of vase-painters at Athens might have worked with a similar sense of priority: being conscious, that is, of ‘getting it right’ with the depiction of bodies. (We may note in passing that ‘landscape’ as a subject was not apparently within the repertoire of any Greek vase-painter; and that when representing drapery, Euphronios shows little interest in seeking realistic effects.) In other words, could it be that the Pioneers were aware of the ‘advances’ in anatomical accuracy with which they have been credited by modern scholars?

Fig. 15 Amphora by Euthymides, from Vulci, c.510 BC. Hector is arming, with his father Priam and mother Hecuba either side. . H 60.5 cm (24 in). Munich, Antikensammlungen 2307.

A vase in Munich signed by Euthymides is often cited in respect of that question, and cannot be bypassed here. This is the amphora celebrated in the pages of E. H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art as an announcement of ‘the greatest discovery of all, the discovery of foreshortening […] It was a tremendous moment in the history of art when, perhaps a little before 500 BC, artists dared for the first time […] to paint a foot as seen from the front’ (Fig. 15). Gombrich’s handbook is perhaps now losing the popularity it once enjoyed. Yet the absolute claim made for a Greek vase-painter has never been controverted. A worldwide survey of art yields no earlier example of the representation of a human foot as seen from the front. And Euthymides, it seems, was aware of his innovation (elementary as it might now appear); at least, he repeated it, on another Munich amphora (inv. 2308), for the figure of a lesser-known warrior called Thorykion (‘Breastplate-wearer’), similarly donning a corselet.

One unifying (and endearing) feature of the Pioneers is that they evidently liked to make reference to one another when inscribing their work. So, on a hydria (water vessel) also at Munich (inv. 2421), Phintias not only shows Euthymides as an earnest youth attending a music lesson, but also being toasted by a bare-breasted courtesan with a flick of her wine-cup. And Euthymides gives as good as he gets – if not more. On the other side of the vase, showing Hector posed half front-on as he slips into his armour, Euthymides depicts a trio of ‘revellers’ (kômastai) – protagonists of a drinking-party that has got to the point where dancing begins (Fig. 16). That these revellers are ‘respectable’ Athenians is indicated by the central figure, who is swinging the knotted stick that citizens customarily carry (and will raise in the Assembly when they come to vote: so in the democracy this stick becomes a sort of egalitarian sceptre). All three display the stocky proportions typically favoured by Euthymides. Since they are similarly bearded, similarly garlanded, and similarly semi-draped, a sophisticated suggestion is that the artist may have intended a sequence of several moves performed by one figure. In any case, the dynamic effect is clear: with a few deft lines, Euthymides is able to render this trio in ‘three-quarter’ view – that is, somewhere between front-on and side-on. The central dancer most conspicuously exemplifies this: stepping to the right, he looks directly backwards, and so shows us an angled spine, and two broad solid shoulder-blades. How easy it would have been to get this posture ‘wrong’ is shown both by the strigil-wielding athlete on the psykter attributed to ‘Smikros’ (see Fig. 12), and by some drunken dancers painted by Euphronios, on a fragmentary krater in the Louvre (G 110).8 Here Euthymides – conceivably, as noted, an elder brother to Euphronios – shows a sure touch. His lines are few but adroit. He sprinkles letters rhythmically around the figures, in line with their movements. And vertically, behind the lead figure holding a drinking cup, he adds a piquant message: HOS OUDEPOTE EUPHRONIOUS, ‘AS NEVER EUPHRONIOS’. The literal translation is easy enough. But the meaning is ambivalent, and has caused much scholarly discussion. Is Euthymides saying that Euphronios has never danced like this? Or is he saying that Euphronios could not draw dancers like these? With regard to the first option, there is some debate as to whether artisans in the Kerameikos were admitted to the formalities of the Athenian symposium: this is a possibility which we shall address in the next chapter (p. 97), but most commentators remain sceptical. The force of the message would then be not so much that Euphronios lacked elegance when it came to dancing, but rather that as a potter-painter he could ‘never’ aspire to be a kômastês. He might depict the handsome, well-born types who attended symposia – occasions that gave rise to the (reportedly often inebriated) performance of the kômos-moves – but socially he lacked the rank to participate. If, however, the second option is accepted, then our quest for an answer to the question ‘what did “the Pioneers” pioneer?’ edges closer to a conclusion. Euthymides is making a boast about his own proficiency at representing the three-quarter view – and a put-down directed at one of his workshop colleagues.

Fig. 16 Drawing of the scene on the reverse of the amphora by Euthymides. The figure on the left is labelled KOMARCHOS (‘lord of the dance’). Munich, Antikensammlungen 2307.

We have no evidence of a riposte to Euthymides by Euphronios. But the figures on his vases speak out in their way. Many examples might be cited, not least the central eponymous figure of the Sarpedon krater, which is shown neither completely side-on nor completely front-on. A personal favourite is the impeccable foreshortening of a javelin-thrower, as traced by Beazley (Fig. 17).

There is little doubt that Ernst Gombrich would have favoured this latter explanation of the challenge issued by Euthymides. Gombrich, following a tradition of German scholarship extending back to the eighteenth century, and the writings of J. J. Winckelmann, patriarch of modern art history, moreover favoured a broadly political explanation of why Euphronios, Euthymides et al. were disposed to ‘new drawing’. An artist ‘dares’ to show a foot front-on: this comes from a liberty of artistic expression enabled by the advent of democracy at Athens c.510 BC. Certainly that date matches the heyday of the Pioneers – although in their surviving work there are no allusions whatsoever to the events and personalities associated with democracy’s foundation (e.g. the assassination of the tyrant Hipparchus in 514 BC).

Fig. 17 Tracing of the figure of an akontist (athlete with javelin), from a fragmentary kalpis (two-handled water vessel) painted by Euphronios. The athlete’s right foot is angled at three-quarters, and seen slightly from above. Folio in Oxford, the Beazley Archive; original vase in Dresden, Skulpturen Sammlung [sic].

Image from the Beazley Archive, courtesy of the Classical Art Research Centre, University of Oxford.

We may be inclined to be more circumspect when it comes to invoking some sort of egalitarian zeitgeist prevalent in late sixth-century BC Athens. ‘Progress’ towards naturalistic modes of representation, in both two- and three-dimensional art, is evident enough in sixth-century Athens under the tyrants. In any case, one final consideration, of a practical nature, remains to be mentioned. Anyone who has experience of ‘life drawing’ will know that the human foot is – along with the human hand – difficult to ‘get right’: it demands practice. But how would an ancient vase-painter get practice; and if naturalism arises from observation – ‘making’ an image, then ‘matching’ it to the object represented – then where and how do our Pioneers do their observing?

The krater by Euphronios in Berlin (see Fig. 1) can be titled ‘Scene of a palaistra’ – i.e. a designated place of wrestling, and other athletic activity, of the sort that became a normal part of civic life at Athens and elsewhere during the sixth century BC. ‘Unwrapping’ that scene with a Reichhold drawing (Fig. 18) compels us to query if Euphronios was ever able to enter such premises and do some sketching – perhaps asking certain athletes to ‘hold it right there’ when necessary?

Dietrich von Bothmer, whose admiration for Euphronios began with this vase, noted that here we see ‘the earliest successful three quarters view in red figure’ – i.e. the athlete with his back to the viewer, shown turning to see a boy extracting a thorn from his foot. Bothmer also commented on the manner in which Euphronios depicts oil being shaken from an alabastron by one of the athletes: ‘an undulating red line’ indicating the ‘sluggish trickle’ of oil from a small, narrow-necked flask, quite different from the pouring of wine or water from a larger vessel. The implication is that Euphronios has recorded the figures, and the oil-pouring, in a documentary spirit. However, the evidence of social history in ancient Greece offers nothing to support the notion of an artisan being admitted to a gymnasium where leisured young citizens spent many hours of their time.

We can therefore only wonder how they did it, these Pioneers. Possibly the boundaries of social class were less rigid than we think. Historians would say that artisans also had scant access to the ancient aristocratic institution of the symposium. But that ambience, too, is represented in fascinating detail by Euphronios – as we shall now see.

Fig. 18 Drawing of a krater by Euphronios in Berlin (Antikensammlung F 2180; see Fig. 1). The athletes are named (including Hegesias, Antiphon, Hipparchos and Hippomedon) and also one of their slaves/valets (Trianon).

after FR pl. 157.

1 This was the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica established in 1829 – later the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.

2 IG I3 824; Athens, Epigraphical Museum EM 6278.

3 Thus a ‘wretched follower’, ‘kümmerlicher Nachahmer’ (Beazley, Attische Vasenmaler des rotfigurigen Stil [Tübingen 1925], 62); or ‘l’imitateur scrupuleux’ (Denoyelle in Denoyelle ed. 1992, 11). Beazley’s scorn was expressed before his knowledge of an amphora with twisted handles, now in Berlin (inv. 1966.19), signed Smikros egraphsen – so close in style to Euphronios that it is suggested that Euphronios painted the vase, then allowed ‘Smikros’ to sign it (a somewhat bizarre scenario).

4 A single sherd from the Acropolis has been attributed: Athens, National Museum Akr. 931.

5 Inv. Cp 11071: see Villard 1953.

6 A signal of Beazley’s categorization comes in his Greek Vases in Poland (Oxford 1928), 15 – describing as ‘pioneer-studies of movement’ two figures on an amphora by Euthymides: a youth pouring wine, a prancing satyr with pipes, each rendered in a three-quarters view.

7 See Beazley, ABV 632ff.

8 The latter vase carries the inscription Euphronios egraphsen tade, ‘Euphronios paints [like] this’ – implying some satisfaction on the artist’s part.