GREEK RED FIGURE POTTERY

A technique of pottery decoration invented in Athens about 525 BC. The technique involved the painting of an outline with added linear detail and the background filled with black, and was thus the reverse of Greek black figure pottery. Artistically, it permitted greater freedom. One of the most famous examples from Etruria is the Sarpedon krater or Euphronios krater, a magnificent krater from about 515 BC, most probably illegally excavated in the Etruscan city of Caere and reclaimed recently by the Italian state from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It depicts the arming of Sarpedon on one side and the carrying of his corpse on the other, and would have formed a centerpiece for Etruscan feasting.

See also ATTIC POTTERY; ETRUSCAN RED FIGURE POTTERY.