Archaeological Museum of Bologna

Museo Civico Archeologico
Via dell'Archiginnasio 2 - 40124 Bologna
Tel. 051.27.57.211

Direzione e Uffici
Via de' Musei 8 – 40124 Bologna
Tel. 051.27.57.211 - Fax 051.26.65.16
mca@comune.bologna.it

MAP

  • banner sezioni

Collections / Ricerca / Greek Collection: the Corinthian pottery

Introduction

From the VIII century BC, Corinth became one of the most active centers of Greece for the production and the export of ceramic pottery.
Corinthian workshops use a characteristic pale yellow clay, highly purified, decorated at first in geometric style.
Already in the last decades of the VIII century BC, thanks to the rapid assimilation of the decorative and iconography motifs coming from the eastern Mediterranean, Corinthian painters develop a figurative style characterized by real and imaginary animals, by narrative scenes also mythological alternate on the body of the vase with exquisitely decorative elements such as braids, lotus flowers and palms.
The technique used is that of the black silhouette on a light background of the clay; the internal details of the figures are outlined through the incision and through the adoption of added colors such as red, purple and white.

Etrusco-Corinthian pottery

The large amount of Corinthian vases exported in Etruria and southern Italy and the emigration of greek craftsmen determined, from about 630 BC, the birth of imitation local production of Corinthian pottery. Among these productions, called Italo-Corinthian, assumed a prominent role, for diffusion and artistic importance, the Etrusco-Corinthian one. In Etruscan centers arose in fact a numerous shops who produced thousands of vases that reproduce forms and decorative motifs of Corinthian models to which sometimes are mixed greek-oriental influences.

Exhibition rooms | Rooms V and VI - Greek collection