Black-figure pottery painting, also known as the black-figure style or black-figure ceramic, is one of the styles of painting on antique Greek vases. It was especially common between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE, although there are specimens dating in the 2nd century BCE. Stylistically it can be distinguished from the preceding orientalizing period and the subsequent red-figure pottery style.
Heracles and Geryon on an Attic black-figured amphora with a thick layer of transparent gloss, c. 540 BCE, now in the Munich State Collection of Antiquities.
Athena wearing the aegis, Attic black-figured hydria by the potter Pamphaios (signed) and the Euphiletos Painter, c. 540 BCE. Found in Tuscania, now in the Cabinet des Médailles, BNF, Paris
Scene from a black-figure amphora from Athens, 6th century BCE, now in the Louvre, Paris
Hercules drives Cerberus ahead of him. The beast turns one of its heads back in a threatening manner and raises its snake tail. Faultily fired Attic neck amphora by the Bucci Painter, c. 540 BC, found in Vulci, now in the Munich State Collection of Antiquities
Pottery of ancient Greece
Pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it, it has exerted a disproportionately large influence on our understanding of Greek society. The shards of pots discarded or buried in the 1st millennium BC are still the best guide available to understand the customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks. There were several vessels produced locally for everyday and kitchen use, yet finer pottery from regions such as Attica was imported by other civilizations throughout the Mediterranean, such as the Etruscans in Italy. There were a multitude of specific regional varieties, such as the South Italian ancient Greek pottery.
Pottery of ancient Greece
Hellenistic Amphorae, stacked the way they were probably transported in antiquity, display in the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology
Disjecta membra (a fragment of ancient Greek pottery)
Neoclassical "Black Basalt" Ware vase by Wedgwood, c. 1815 AD
