There were several interconnected traditions
of painting in ancient Greece.
Due to
their technical differences, they underwent somewhat differentiated
developments. Not all painting techniques are
equally well represented in the
archaeological record.
[edit]
Panel painting
[show]
List of known Ancient Greek
painters
One of the Pitsa panels, the only surviving panel paintings
from Archaic Greece.
Agatharchus
Antiphilus
Apelles
Apollodorus (painter)
Aristides of
Thebes
Cimon of
Cleonae
Echion
(painter)
Euphranor
Eupompus
Melanthius
Nicomachus
of Thebes
Panaenus
Parrhasius
Pausias
Polyeidos
(poet)
Polygnotus
Protogenes
Theon of Samos
Timarete
Timomachus
Zeuxis and Parrhasius
The most respected form of art, according to
authors like
Pliny
or
Pausanias
, were individual, mobile
paintings on wooden boards, technically
described as
panel
paintings
. The
techniques used were
encaustic
(wax) painting and
tempera
. Such paintings normally depicted
figural scenes, including
portraits
and
still-lifes
; we have descriptions of many
compositions. They were collected and often
displayed in public spaces.
Pausanias describes such exhibitions
at
Athens
and
Delphi
. We know the names of many famous
painters,
mainly
of the Classical and Hellenistic periods, from literature (see
expandable
list to
the right).
Unfortunately, due to the perishable nature of
the materials used and the
major
upheavals at the end of antiquity, not one of the famous works of Greek
panel painting has survived, nor even any of
the copies that doubtlessly
existed, and which give us most of our
knowledge of Greek sculpture. The most
important surviving Greek examples are the
fairly low-quality
Pitsa
panels
from
circa 530 BC, and a large group of much
later Graeco-Roman archaeological
survivals from the dry conditions of Egypt,
the
Fayum
mummy portraits
,
together with the
similar
Severan
Tondo
.
Byzantine
icons
are also derived from
the encaustic panel painting
tradition.
[edit]
Wall painting
Symposium scene
in the Tomb of the
Diver at Paestum, circa 480
BC.
The tradition of wall painting in Greece goes
back at least to the
Minoan
and
Mycenaean
Bronze
Age
, with
the lavish fresco decoration of
sites
like
Knossos
,
Tiryns
and
Mycenae
. It is not clear, whether there is
any
continuity between these antecedents and later
Greek wall paintings.
Wall paintings are frequently described in
Pausanias, and many appear to have
been
produced in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Due to the lack of
architecture surviving intact, not many are
preserved. The most notable examples
are a
monumental Archaic 7th century BC scene of
hoplite
combat from inside a temple at Kalapodi
(near
Thebes
), and the
elaborate frescoes from the 4th century "Grave
of Phillipp" and the "Tomb of
Persephone" at
Verg
in
a
in
Macedonia
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