BERLIN PAINTER

flourished 500460 BC Athenian vase painter who, with Kleophrades, is considered the outstanding vase painter of the Late Archaic period. He is best known as the decorator of an amphora now in Berlin. Stylistically, the Berlin amphora is decorated on a new principle of design. It had been customary to frame the groups of figures on each side with pattern bands. The Berlin Painter eliminated this frame, allowing the figures to dominate. The unusually large figures stand out sharply against the amphora's black background. Several scholars feel that the Berlin Painter was most productive and his work most original during his early period (c. 500480 BC). Some feel, too, that his later works (c. 470460) may actually be those of a workshop or of a group of artists copying the master. More than 200 vases have been attributed to the Berlin Painter on the basis of their stylistic relationship to the Berlin amphora. Among the vases most frequently attributed to the Berlin Painter are an amphora (now in Munich) depicting a discus thrower, made especially for the Great Panathenaea, a festival of games held in Athens every four years; a bell krater, now in the Louvre, Paris, representing Zeus pursuing Ganymede; a volute krater now in the British Museum, showing Achilles in his last two victories; a hydria (water pot) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, showing Achilles and Penthesileia; and a hydria in the Vatican, depicting Apollo traveling over the sea on a winged tripod. Additional reading A useful study of the artist is Donna Carol Kurtz, The Berlin Painter (1983), with drawings by John Beazley.