The Chicago Painter and the Villa Giulia Painter's group

Sammanfattning: The Chicago Painter is a member of the Villa Giulia Painter's group during the decades around 450 B.C. in Athens. He is a red-figure vase painter who has been named by J.D. Beazley after a stamnos in the Art Institute in Chicago. Primarily there are 43 vases attributed to the Chicago Painter by Beazley and another 17 vases later attributed by Beazley and other scholars. In the following four cases I consider the attribution to be doubtful, for reasons of style and iconography: Marseilles 3592, Pesaro 3006, Moscow 1291 and Adria 645. The Chicago Painter's production consists of volute- and column-kraters, bell- and calyx-kraters, stamnoi, pelikai, hydrai, oinochoai, a lekythos, a pyxis, a kylix and a cup. There are some correlations between decoration and shape, particularly in the case of the stamnoi, where meanders, often interrupted by cross squares, form the ground lines below the figure motifs. The stamnoi have torus foot, while the feet of oinochoai and hydriai are generally turned in several degrees. The internal chronology is mainly dependent on the shapes of the vases. There seems to be a time-span of about 20 years between the painter's earliest vases and his latest; during this long time, his artistic competence is the same and there is no difference in the high quality of his paintings. The choice of motifs connects the painters within the Villa Giulia painter's group. The shapes and the ornaments are also uniting components. By describing the iconography, mainly of the A-sides, it is possible to compare the Chicago Painter with the Villa Giulia and the Methyse Painters, in order to prove their relationship and the differences between them. The figure motifs on stamnoi are generally Dionysian, while the motifs on pelikai and hydriai depict other mythological figures.