page_title: Amasis Painter
section_title: Oeuvre
hierarchical_section_title: Amasis Painter / Oeuvre
caption_attribution_description: English: Amasis' signature (ΑΜΑΣΙΣ ΜΕΠΟΙΕΣΕΝ), rotated 90° anticlockwise, detail from a scene representing Herakles entering Olympus. Attic black-figure olpe, 550–530 BC. Français&#160;: Signature d'Amasis (ΑΜΑΣΙΣ ΜΕΠΟΙΕΣΕΝ), tourné à 90° dans le sens inverse des aiguilles d'une montre, détail d'une scène représentant l'entrée d'Héraclès dans l'Olympe. Olpè attique à figures noires du potier Amasis (signature) et du Peintre d'Amasis, 550-530 av. J.-C.
context_page_description: The Amasis Painter was an ancient Greek vase painter who worked in the black-figure technique. He owes his name to the signature of the potter Amasis, who signed 12 works painted by the same hand. At the time of the exhibition, "The Amasis Painter and His World", 132 vases had been attributed to this artist.
context_section_description: There are 11 black figure vases and one fragment that are painted by the same hand and bear a signature that reads, Amasis mepoiesen meaning "Amasis made me", indicating the artist Amasis as the potter of these works. As all 12 works were decorated by a single painter, some scholars have assumed that the potter and painter were one and the same. However, since the 1971 attribution of a signed work by Amasis to the hand of the Taleides Painter, connoisseurs are reminded to distinguish between the potter Amasis and the Amasis Painter with care.
  The painter's 12 signed pieces include three broad-shouldered neck-amphorae, four olpai (an early form of wine jug), one band cup, one cup, one small bowl, a pyxis and a vessel fragment. For scholars who believe that the potter and painter were identical, the petite and refined shapes of the Amasis vessels reinforce the argument for Amasis' innovative contributions to sixth-century Athenian vases. As Boardman writes, "The potting of the Amasis Painter's vases is as distinctive as the painting. The concurrence of the two phenomena might well suggest that potter and painter were one man, particularly as the distinctive elements in each craft seem to share a common spirit."
  Whether the painter was indeed the potter or not, the Amasis Painter decorated a wide variety of shapes, including panel and neck amphorae, used for wine or oil storage; oinochoai, wine pouring jugs; lethythoi, oil jars; alabastra and aryballoi, for oils or perfumes; and a variety of drinking cups, including mastoids, skyphoi, and kylikes. Of these shapes, the Amasis Painter seems to have preferred smaller, "user-friendly" forms, from 30 to 35 centimeters high, and reduced dimensions of painting space, for example, in panels.
caption: Signature of Amasis on an olpe with trefoil mouth, Louvre F 30
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