Attic red-figure
Niobid Painter's name vase
Photograph: M.Tiverios, Elliniki Techni
Photograph: M. Robertson, Greek Painting
Museum: Paris, Louvre
Size: 55cm. (calyx-crater)
Function: convivial
Technique: red-figure with variable ground lines and landscape elements
Style: early classical
Subject/s: A. Herakles and Athena join Greek heroes. B. Apollo and Artemis avenge their mother by slaughtering the children of Niobe who boasted of her superiority.
Date: mid 5th c.
Analysis: the most famous example in Athenian vase-painting of the use of variable ground lines, landscape features such as hills, painted in white, and trees in red-figure, partially hidden figures and three-quartered and frontal faces. Painted not long after the wall painter Polygnotos was brought from Thasos to work at Delphi and Athens, it can help us to visualise the technique Pausanias says he used at Delphi.
