Campanian vase painting

The sand-coloured to light brown clay (lighter than other South Italian clays) of Campania was covered with a slip that developed a pink or red tint after firing, creating an appearance very similar to that of Attic vases.

The Campanian painters preferred smaller vessel types, but also hydriai and bell kraters.

Subjects include youths, women, thiasos scenes, birds and animals, and often native Samnite warriors.

Mythological scenes and depictions related to burial rites play a subsidiary role.

Naiskos scenes, ornamental elements and polychromy are adopted after 340 BC under Lucanian influence.

Their work is characterised by a preference for satyr figures with thyrsos, depictions of heads (normally below the handles of hydriai), decorative borders of garments, and the frequent use of additional white, red and yellow.

The CA Painter is considered as the outstanding artist of his group, or even of Campanian vase painting as a whole.

The CA painter was polychrome but tended to use much white for architecture and female figures.

Orestes , Elektra and Pylades in front of the grave of Agamemnon , hydria by the Painter of Louvre K 428 , circa 330 BC. Paris: Louvre .
Sacrifice scene on a bell krater by the Painter of the Sacrifice in the Louvre , circa 330/320 BC. Paris: Louvre.
Medea killing one of her children; neck amphora by the Ixion painter , circa 330 BC. Paris : Louvre .