White-ground technique

The light slip was probably meant to make the vases appear more valuable, perhaps by eliciting associations with ivory or marble.

White-ground painting is less durable than black- or red-figure, which is why such vases were primarily used as votives and grave vessels.

The development of white-ground vase painting took place parallel to that of the black- and red-figure styles.

The earliest surviving example of the technique is a fragmentary kantharos signed by the potter-painter Nearchos c. 570 BC .

The ground is rarely pure white, but usually slightly yellowish or light beige.

The images are made up of outline drawings in shiny slip and coloured areas in mineral paint.

Some details, such as fruit, jewellery, weaponry or vessels can be executed in clay slip in such a fashion as to attain a slight plasticity, additionally they may be gilded.

The paints used are limited to tones of red and brown, yellow, white and black.

It replaced Early Classical lekythos painting around the middle of the 5th century BC.

By this time, white-ground can be identified most closely with three principal shapes: the lekythos, the krater, and cups.

Therefore, the durability of such vase paintings is very limited; many examples are badly preserved or completely worn.

Notable in this regard is the Group of the Huge Lekythoi, specialised in decorating large grave vessels.

Later, during the Hellenistic period, various types of white-ground pottery occur in several locations of the Greek World, sometimes painted monochrome, sometimes polychrome.

Kylix of Apollo , Attic, c. 460 BC. Apollo pours a libation , detail. [ 1 ]
Attic white-ground lekythos (type I) depicting Heracles fighting Geryon , Antonino Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum , Palermo
Spinning woman, Attic oinochoe (type III), probably from Locri, by the Brygos Painter , c. 490 BC
Hera on the tondo of an Attic white-ground kylix (type IV) found at Vulci , by the Sabouroff Painter ( c. 470 BC)
Raging maenad by the Brygos Painter . She holds a thyrsos in her right hand, her left is swinging a panther through the air. A snake is winding through the diadem in her hair. Tondo of a kylix , 490–480 BC. Staatliche Antikensammlungen , Munich .