Greece to Paris, 530 BCE–1890

Exekias

Dionysus Cup

about 530 BCE

Black-figure terracotta, about 12 in. across. Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich

Exekias (Athenian potter and painter, 6th century BCE). Look at the figures: they are flat black silhouettes, with the detail scratched into them.

Look at

• Ship, god, grapes and dolphins are solid black shapes against the orange-red ground.
• Lines inside the shapes, like the grape bunches and the ship's planking, are cut through the black to the clay below.
• The sail is the one pale shape, so it reads as a hole of light in the upper half of the bowl.
• The design has no ground line: the dolphins circle the ship at every angle, so the whole inside of the cup is sea.

• The god is Dionysus; the dolphins are the pirates he turned into fish. Only the inside is shown here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (photographer's release)