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black-figure pottery

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style of painting on ancient Greek vases

Wikidata facts

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Herakles Geryon Staatliche Antikensammlungen 1379.jpg
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start time
0700-01-01
Commons category
Black-figure pottery
end time
0450-00-00
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Encyclopedic overview

Heracles and Geryon on an Attic black-figured amphora with a thick layer of transparent gloss, c. 540 BC, now in the Munich State Collection of Antiquities.

Black-figure pottery painting (also known as black-figure style or black-figure ceramic; Ancient Greek: μελανόμορφα, romanized: melanómorpha) is one of the styles of painting on antique Greek vases. It was especially common between the 7th and 5th centuries BC, although there are specimens dating in the 2nd century BC. Stylistically it can be distinguished from the preceding orientalizing period and the subsequent red-figure pottery style.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “black-figure pottery” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.