Dinos of the Gorgon Painter depicts hoplite
Painted decoration
The ceramic ensemble is decorated in the black-figure style, with ochre highlights and incisions outlining the images. The greater part of the decoration is made up of a palmette frieze with intertwined animals in the Corinthian tradition. The well-shaped stand is covered in friezes showing many different animals, like lions, cows, deer, along with fantastic creatures like sirens and sphinxes.
The vase itself is decorated with three registers, one on top of the other. The lowest register begins with a spiral on the rounded bottom of the vase and develops into four rows of animals, while the central register is a band of interlaced palmettes. The uppermost register, the most interesting, is the earliest known example in archaic Greek pottery of an entirely figurative and narrative frieze. It depicts a scene from Greek mythology: Perseus fleeing the Gorgons after he killed their sister, Medusa. The other two figures in the scene are Hermes, who can be identified by his petasos hat, and a woman who is presumably Athena. On the other side, there is a battle scene between several hoplites in chariots.
The artist who decorated the vase, whose name is not known, was a student of the Nessos Painter, the most ancient representative of the Attic black figure tradition. According to Martine Denoyelles, he also got the Gorgon theme from the Nessos Painter, but "with this entirely narrative frieze, stripped of all decorative elements, the Gorgon painter announce the blooming of Attic production, which increasingly disengaged itself from Corinthian influence in the second quarter of the sixth century BC.