To introduce students to Greek mythology by identifying heroes, goddesses, and related stories depicted on pottery surfaces of selected examples from Joslyn Art Museum's collection. An interdisciplinary approach to Greek pottery enables one to integrate a picture of the ancient past by considering relationships between different modes of cultural expression, such as connections between art, history, and literature. It is important to note the role and rank of Greek pottery in relation to other categories of art. Most pots, however, were made for use in daily life, to meet ordinary domestic needs such as the storage and serving of food, whether at regular meals or on special occasions. The aims in their creation of certain pottery shapes are certainly aesthetic and might be dictated by religion, but are primarily functional.
Scholars attempt to assign works to particular potters and vase-painters.
To make attributions to artists, they rely on the comparison of small details in the rendering of features, dress, and pose to determine a particular painter's style. Achieving proper assessment of the depictions on Greek pottery is one of the most difficult tasks which faces art historians. Certainly there is a correspondence between representations on vases and myths of the Greeks. These representations ought not be regarded as illustrations of literary accounts of myth, rather as parallel ways to express myth, visual rather than verbal. Caution is of the utmost necessity in using representations themselves as a source of understanding Greek culture.