Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,084 inhabitants in 2013, over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area. Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era, it is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages". A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the established Kingdom of Italy; the Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy due to the prestige of the masterpieces by Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini. The city attracts millions of tourists each year, the Historic Centre of Florence was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982; the city is noted for Renaissance art and architecture and monuments.
The city contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, still exerts an influence in the fields of art and politics. Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Florence is an important city in Italian fashion, being ranked in the top 15 fashion capitals of the world. In 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, after a long period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune, it was the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe and the world from the 14th to 16th centuries; the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, still is, accepted as the Italian language. All the writers and poets in Italian literature of the golden age are in some way connected with Florence, leading to the adoption of the Florentine dialect, above all the local dialects, as a literary language of choice.
Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of industry all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon and Hungary. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War, they financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European history's most important noble families. Lorenzo de' Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century: Leo X and Clement VII. Catherine de Medici married King Henry II of France and, after his death in, reigned as regent in France. Marie de' Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future King Louis XIII; the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de' Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici in 1737.
The Etruscans formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole, destroyed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 80 BC in reprisal for supporting the populares faction in Rome. The present city of Florence was established by Julius Caesar in 59 BC as a settlement for his veteran soldiers and was named Fluentia, owing to the fact that it was built between two rivers, changed to Florentia, it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the main route between Rome and the north, within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement became an important commercial centre. In centuries to come, the city experienced turbulent periods of Ostrogothic rule, during which the city was troubled by warfare between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines, which may have caused the population to fall to as few as 1,000 people. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century. Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital.
The population began to grow again and commerce prospered. In 854, Florence and Fiesole were united in one county. Margrave Hugo chose Florence as his residency instead of Lucca at about 1000 AD; the Golden Age of Florentine art began around this time. In 1013, construction began on the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte; the exterior of the church was reworked in Romanesque style between 1059 and 1128. In 1100, Florence was a "Commune"; the city's primary resource was the Arno river, providing power and access for the industry, access to the Mediterranean sea for international trade. Another great source of strength was its industrious merchant community; the Florentine merchant banking skills became recognised in Europe after they brought decisive financial innovation to medieval fairs. This period saw the eclipse of Florence's powerful rival Pisa, the exercise of power by the mercantile elite following an anti-aristocratic movement, led by Giano della Bella, that resulted in a set of laws called the Ordinances of Justice.
Of a population estimated at 94,00
Krater
A krater or crater was a large vase in Ancient Greece used for watering down wine. At a Greek symposium, kraters were placed in the center of the room, they were quite large, so they were not portable when filled. Thus, the wine-water mixture would be withdrawn from the krater with other vessels, such as a kyathos, an amphora, or a kylix. In fact, Homer's Odyssey describes a steward drawing wine from a krater at a banquet and running to and fro pouring the wine into guests' drinking cups; the modern Greek word now used for undiluted wine, originates from the krasis of wine and water in kraters. Kraters were glazed on the interior to make the surface of the clay more impervious for holding water, for aesthetic reasons, since the interior could be seen; the exterior of kraters depicted scenes from Greek life, such as the Attic Late 1 Krater, made between 760 and 735 B. C. E; this object was found among other funeral objects, its exterior depicted a funeral procession to the gravesite. At the beginning of each symposium a symposiarch, or "lord of the common drink", was elected by the participants.
He would assume control of the wine servants, thus of the degree of wine dilution and how it changed during the party, the rate of cup refills. The krater and how it was filled and emptied was thus the centerpiece of the symposiarch's authority. An astute symposiarch should be able to diagnose the degree of inebriation of his fellow symposiasts and make sure that the symposium progressed smoothly and without drunken excess. Drinking ákratos wine was considered a severe faux pas in ancient Greece, enough to characterize the drinker as a drunkard and someone who lacked restraint and principle. Ancient writers prescribed that a mixing ratio of 1:3 was optimal for long conversation, a ratio of 1:2 when fun was to be had, 1:1 was only suited for orgiastic revelry, to be indulged in rarely, if at all. Since such mixtures would produce an unpalatable and watery drink if applied to most wines made in the modern style, this practice of the ancients has led to speculation that ancient wines might have been vinified to a high alcoholic degree and sugar content, e.g. by using dehydrated grapes, could withstand dilution with water better.
Such wines would have withstood time and the vagaries of transportation much better. The ancient writers offer scant details of ancient vinification methods, therefore this theory, though plausible, remains unsupported by evidence; this form originated in Corinth in the seventh century BCE but was taken over by the Athenians where it is black-figure. They ranged in size from 35 centimetres to 56 centimetres in height and were thrown in three pieces: the body/ shoulder area was one, the base another, the neck/ lip/ rim a third; the handles were pulled separately. These are among the largest of the kraters developed by the potter Exekias in black figure though in fact always seen in red; the lower body is shaped like the calyx of a flower, the foot is stepped. The psykter-shaped vase fits inside it so well stylistically that it has been suggested that the two might have been made as a set, it is always made with two robust upturned handles positioned on opposite sides of the lower body or "cul".
This type of krater, defined by volute-shaped handles, was invented in Laconia in the early 6th century BC adopted by Attic potters. Its production was carried on by Greeks in Apulia until the end of the 4th century BC, its shape and method of manufacture are similar to those of the column krater, but the handles are unique: to make each, the potter would have first made two side spirals as decorative disks attached a long thin slab of clay around them both forming a drum with flanged edges. This strip would have been continued downward until the bottom of the handle where the potter would have cut a U-shaped arch in the clay before attaching the handle to the body of the vase. Bell kraters were first made in the early fifth century which meant that it came than the three other krater types This form of krater looks like an inverted bell with handles that are faced up. Bell kraters are not black-figure like the other kraters. According to most scholars ceramic kraters imitated shapes designed for metal vessels.
Among the largest and most famous metal kraters in antiquity were one in the possession of the Samian tyrant Polycrates, another one dedicated by Croesus to the Delphic oracle. There are a few extant Archaic bronze kraters exclusively of the volute-type, their main production centres were Sparta and Corinth, in Peloponnesus. During the Classical period the Volute-type continued to be popular along with the calyx-type, beside the Corinthian workshop an Attic one was active. Exquisite exemplars of both volute- and calyx-kraters come from Macedonian 4th century BC graves. Among them the gilded Derveni Krater represents an exceptional chef d’œuvre of late Classical metalwork; the Vix bronze crater, found in a Celtic tomb in central France is the largest known Greek krater, being 1.63 m in height and over 200 kg in weight. Others were in silver, which were too valuable and tempting to thieves to be buried in graves, have not survived. Ornamental stone kraters are known from Hellenistic times, the most famous being the Borghese Vase of Pentelic Marble and the Medici Vase, als
British Museum
The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history and culture. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been sourced during the era of the British Empire, it documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world; the British Museum was established in 1753 based on the collections of the Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. It first opened in Montagu House, on the site of the current building, its expansion over the following 250 years was a result of expanding British colonisation and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881. In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997.
The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture and Sport, as with all national museums in the UK it charges no admission fee, except for loan exhibitions. Its ownership of some of its most famous objects originating in other countries is disputed and remains the subject of international controversy, most notably in the case of the Parthenon Marbles. Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum", its foundations lie in the will of the Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster. During the course of his lifetime, after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter, Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities and, not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II, for the nation, for a sum of £20,000. At that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71,000 objects of all kinds including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Sudan, Greece, the Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas.
On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his Royal Assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford, they were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts, assembled by various British monarchs. Together these four "foundation collections" included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving manuscript of Beowulf; the British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king open to the public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests; the addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library.
The body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House, as a location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The trustees rejected Buckingham House, on the site now occupied by Buckingham Palace, on the grounds of cost and the unsuitability of its location. With the acquisition of Montagu House, the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. At this time, the largest parts of collection were the library, which took up the majority of the rooms on the ground floor of Montagu House and the natural history objects, which took up an entire wing on the second state storey of the building. In 1763, the trustees of the British Museum, under the influence of Peter Collinson and William Watson, employed the former student of Carl Linnaeus, Daniel Solander to reclassify the natural history collection according to the Linnaean system, thereby making the Museum a public centre of learning accessible to the full range of European natural historians.
In 1823, King George IV gave the King's Library assembled by George III, Parliament gave the right to a copy of every book published in the country, thereby ensuring that the museum's library would expand indefinitely. During the few years after its foundation the British Museum received several further gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts and David Garrick's library of 1,000 printed plays; the predominance of natural history and manuscripts began to lessen when in 1772 the museum acquired for £8,410 its first significant antiquities in Sir William Hamilton's "first" collection of Greek vases. From 1778, a display of objects from the South Seas brought back from the round-the-world voyages of Captain James Cook and the travels of other explorers fascinated visitors with a glimpse of unknown lands; the bequest of a collection of books, engraved gems, coins and drawings by Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode in 1800 did much to raise the museum's reputation. The museum's first notable addition towards its collection of antiquities, since its foundation, was by Sir William Hamilton, British Ambassador to Naples, who sold his collection of Greek and Roman artefacts to
Metal
A metal is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, conducts electricity and heat well. Metals are malleable or ductile. A metal may be an alloy such as stainless steel. In physics, a metal is regarded as any substance capable of conducting electricity at a temperature of absolute zero. Many elements and compounds that are not classified as metals become metallic under high pressures. For example, the nonmetal iodine becomes a metal at a pressure of between 40 and 170 thousand times atmospheric pressure; some materials regarded as metals can become nonmetals. Sodium, for example, becomes a nonmetal at pressure of just under two million times atmospheric pressure. In chemistry, two elements that would otherwise qualify as brittle metals—arsenic and antimony—are instead recognised as metalloids, on account of their predominately non-metallic chemistry. Around 95 of the 118 elements in the periodic table are metals; the number is inexact as the boundaries between metals and metalloids fluctuate due to a lack of universally accepted definitions of the categories involved.
In astrophysics the term "metal" is cast more to refer to all chemical elements in a star that are heavier than the lightest two and helium, not just traditional metals. A star fuses lighter atoms hydrogen and helium, into heavier atoms over its lifetime. Used in that sense, the metallicity of an astronomical object is the proportion of its matter made up of the heavier chemical elements. Metals are present in many aspects of modern life; the strength and resilience of some metals has led to their frequent use in, for example, high-rise building and bridge construction, as well as most vehicles, many home appliances, tools and railroad tracks. Precious metals were used as coinage, but in the modern era, coinage metals have extended to at least 23 of the chemical elements; the history of metals is thought to begin with the use of copper about 11,000 years ago. Gold, iron and brass were in use before the first known appearance of bronze in the 5th millennium BCE. Subsequent developments include the production of early forms of steel.
Metals are lustrous, at least when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured. Sheets of metal thicker than a few micrometres appear opaque; the solid or liquid state of metals originates in the capacity of the metal atoms involved to lose their outer shell electrons. Broadly, the forces holding an individual atom’s outer shell electrons in place are weaker than the attractive forces on the same electrons arising from interactions between the atoms in the solid or liquid metal; the electrons involved become delocalised and the atomic structure of a metal can be visualised as a collection of atoms embedded in a cloud of mobile electrons. This type of interaction is called a metallic bond; the strength of metallic bonds for different elemental metals reaches a maximum around the center of the transition metal series, as these elements have large numbers of delocalized electrons. Although most elemental metals have higher densities than most nonmetals, there is a wide variation in their densities, lithium being the least dense and osmium the most dense.
Magnesium and titanium are light metals of significant commercial importance. Their respective densities of 1.7, 2.7 and 4.5 g/cm3 can be compared to those of the older structural metals, like iron at 7.9 and copper at 8.9 g/cm3. An iron ball would thus weigh about as much as three aluminium balls. Metals are malleable and ductile, deforming under stress without cleaving; the nondirectional nature of metallic bonding is thought to contribute to the ductility of most metallic solids. In contrast, in an ionic compound like table salt, when the planes of an ionic bond slide past one another, the resultant change in location shifts ions of the same charge into close proximity, resulting in the cleavage of the crystal; such a shift is not observed in a covalently bonded crystal, such as a diamond, where fracture and crystal fragmentation occurs. Reversible elastic deformation in metals can be described by Hooke's Law for restoring forces, where the stress is linearly proportional to the strain. Heat or forces larger than a metal's elastic limit may cause a permanent deformation, known as plastic deformation or plasticity.
An applied force may be a compressive force, or a shear, bending or torsion force. A temperature change may affect the movement or displacement of structural defects in the metal such as grain boundaries, point vacancies and screw dislocations, stacking faults and twins in both crystalline and non-crystalline metals. Internal slip and metal fatigue may ensue; the atoms of metallic substances are arranged in one of three common crystal structures, namely body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic, hexagonal close-packed. In bcc, each atom is positioned at the center of a cube of eight others. In fcc and hcp, each atom is surrounded by twelve others; some metals adopt different structures depending on the temperature. The
Chinese ceramics
Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since pre-dynastic times and are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. The first pottery was made during the Palaeolithic era. Chinese ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns, to the sophisticated Chinese porcelain wares made for the imperial court and for export. Porcelain was a Chinese invention and is so identified with China that it is still called "china" in everyday English usage. Most Chinese ceramics of the finest quality, were made on an industrial scale, thus few names of individual potters were recorded. Many of the most important kiln workshops were owned by or reserved for the Emperor, large quantities of Chinese export porcelain were exported as diplomatic gifts or for trade from an early date to East Asia and the Islamic world, from around the 16th century to Europe. Chinese ceramics have had an enormous influence on other ceramic traditions in these areas.
Over their long history, Chinese ceramics can be classified between those made for the imperial court, either to use or distribute, those made for a discriminating Chinese market, those for popular Chinese markets or for export. Some types of wares were made only or for special uses such as burial in tombs, or for use on altars; the earliest Chinese pottery was earthenware, which continued in production for utilitarian uses throughout Chinese history, but was less used for fine wares. Stoneware, fired at higher temperatures, impervious to water, was developed early and continued to be used for fine pottery in many areas at most periods. Porcelain, on a Western definition, is "a collective term comprising all ceramic ware, white and translucent, no matter what ingredients are used to make it or to what use it is put"; the Chinese tradition recognizes two primary categories of ceramics, high-fired and low-fired, so doing without stoneware, which in Chinese tradition is grouped with porcelain.
Terms such as "porcellaneous" or "near-porcelain" may be used for stonewares with porcelain-like characteristics. The Erya defined porcelain as "fine, compact pottery". Chinese pottery can be classified as being either northern or southern. China comprises two separate and geologically different land masses, brought together by continental drift and forming a junction that lies between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, sometimes known as the Nanshan-Qinling divide; the contrasting geology of the north and south led to differences in the raw materials available for making ceramics. Ware-types can be from widespread kiln-sites in either north or south China, but the two can nearly always be distinguished, influences across this divide may affect shape and decoration, but will be based on different clay bodies, with fundamental effects; the kiln types were different, in the north the fuel was coal, as opposed to wood in the south, which affects the wares. Southern materials have high silica, low alumina and high potassium oxide, the reverse of northern materials in each case.
The northern materials are very suitable for stoneware, while in the south there are areas suitable for porcelain. Chinese porcelain is made by a combination of the following materials: Kaolin – essential ingredient composed of the clay mineral kaolinite. Porcelain stone – decomposed micaceous or feldspar rocks also known as petunse. Feldspar Quartz In the context of Chinese ceramics, the term porcelain lacks a universally accepted definition; this in turn has led to confusion about. Claims have been made for the late Eastern Han dynasty, the Three Kingdoms period, the Six Dynasties period, the Tang dynasty. Kiln technology has always been a key factor in the development of Chinese pottery; the Chinese developed effective kilns capable of firing at around 1,000 °C before 2000 BC. These were updraft kilns built below ground. Two main types of kiln remained in use until modern times; these are the dragon kiln of hilly southern China fuelled by wood and thin and running up a slope, the horseshoe-shaped mantou kiln of the north Chinese plains and more compact.
Both could reliably produce the temperatures of up to 1300 °C or more needed for porcelain. In the late Ming, the egg-shaped kiln or zhenyao was developed at Jingdezhen, but used there; this was something of a compromise between the other types, offered locations in the firing chamber with a range of firing conditions. Important specific types of pottery, many coming from more than one period, are dealt with individually in sections lower down. Pottery dating from 20,000 years ago was found at the Xianrendong Cave site in Jiangxi province, making it among the earliest pottery yet found. Another reported -- 18,000 years ago in the Yuchanyan Cave in southern China. By the Middle and Late Neolithic most of the larger archaeological cultures in China were farmers producing a variety of attractive and large vessels boldly painted, or decorated by cutting or impressing. Decoration is abstract or of stylized animals – fish are a speciality at the river settlement of Banpo; the distinctive Majiayao pottery, with orange bodies and black paint, is characterised by fine past
Lekythos
A lekythos is a type of ancient Greek vessel used for storing oil olive oil. It has a narrow body and one handle attached to the neck of the vessel, is thus a narrow type of jug, with no pouring lip. In the "shoulder" and "cylindrical" types which became the most common the latter, the sides of the body are vertical by the shoulder, there is a sharp change of direction as the neck curves in. However, there are a number of varieties, the word seems to have been used more in ancient times than by modern archeologists, they are in pottery, but there are carved stone examples. Lekythoi were associated with funerary rites, with the white ground technique of vase painting, too fragile for most items in regular use; because of their handle they were only decorated with one image, on the other side from the handle. The lekythos was used for anointing dead bodies of unmarried women and many lekythoi are found in tombs; the images on lekythoi were depictions of daily activities or rituals. Because they are so used in funerary situations, they may depict funerary rites, a scene of loss, or a sense of departure as a form of funerary art.
These drawings are outline drawings that are quite expressionless and somber in appearance. The decoration of these ceramic vessels consists of black paint; these colors were not used until 530 BC in Athens. Many artists of these vessels attempted to add more color to the figures, but abandoned the idea, which provides more of a contrast; these vessels were popular during the 5th century BC, however there are many that have been found dating all the way back to 700 BC. They contained a perfumed oil, offered either to the dead person or to the gods of the underworld; some lekythoi were fitted with a small, inner chamber so that they might appear full, while in reality they contained only a small amount of the expensive oil. The Lekythos was used to smear perfumed oil on a woman's skin prior to getting married and were placed in tombs of unmarried women to allow them to prepare for a wedding in the afterlife. Lekythoi can be divided into five types: the standard or cylindrical lekythos, which measures between 30 and 50 cm though there are much larger "huge lekythoi", up to 1 m, which may have been used to replace funerary stele, the Deianeria lekythos which originates from Corinth, this form has an oval profile and a round shoulder and is of a small size, it was produced from the beginning of the black figure period until the late 6th century, the shoulder or secondary lekythos, a variation on the standard type produced from the mid 5th century on.
These have a swelling body. There are "plastic" lekythoi, with bodies formed in the shape of a head, animal, or other form. Ancient Greek vase painting Corpus vasorum antiquorum Lekythion "small lekythos", a metric pattern in poetry named after this type of vessel Loutrophoros Pottery of ancient Greece Reed Painter "Beazley", "Lekythos", Classical Art Research Centre, University of Oxford Woodford, Susan, An Introduction To Greek Art, 1986, Duckworth, ISBN 9780801419942 Lekythos at Encyclopædia Britannica
Pottery of ancient Greece
Ancient Greek pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, 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 various specific regional varieties, such as the South Italian ancient Greek pottery. Throughout these places, various types and shapes of vases were used. Not all were purely utilitarian; some were decorative and meant for elite consumption and domestic beautification as much as serving a storage or other function, such as the krater with its usual use in diluting wine.
Earlier Greek styles of pottery, called "Aegean" rather than "Ancient Greek", include Minoan pottery sophisticated by its final stages, Cycladic pottery, Minyan ware and Mycenaean pottery in the Bronze Age, followed by the cultural disruption of the Greek Dark Age. As the culture recovered Sub-Mycenaean pottery blended into the Protogeometric style, which begins Ancient Greek pottery proper; the rise of vase painting saw increasing decoration. Geometric art in Greek pottery was contiguous with the late Dark Age and early Archaic Greece, which saw the rise of the Orientalizing period; the pottery produced in Archaic and Classical Greece included at first black-figure pottery, yet other styles emerged such as red-figure pottery and the white ground technique. Styles such as West Slope Ware were characteristic of the subsequent Hellenistic period, which saw vase painting's decline. Interest in Greek art lagged behind the revival of classical scholarship during the Renaissance and revived in the academic circle round Nicholas Poussin in Rome in the 1630s.
Though modest collections of vases recovered from ancient tombs in Italy were made in the 15th and 16th centuries these were regarded as Etruscan. It is possible. Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums of 1764 first refuted the Etruscan origin of what we now know to be Greek pottery yet Sir William Hamilton's two collections, one lost at sea the other now in the British Museum, were still published as "Etruscan vases". Much of the early study of Greek vases took the form of production of albums of the images they depict, however neither D'Hancarville's nor Tischbein's folios record the shapes or attempt to supply a date and are therefore unreliable as an archaeological record. Serious attempts at scholary study made steady progress over the 19th century starting with the founding of the Instituto di Corrispondenza in Rome in 1828, followed by Eduard Gerhard's pioneering study Auserlesene Griechische Vasenbilder, the establishment of the journal Archaeologische Zeitung in 1843 and the Ecole d'Athens 1846.
It was Gerhard who first outlined the chronology we now use, namely: Orientalizing, Black Figure, Red Figure, Polychromatic. It was Otto Jahn's 1854 catalogue Vasensammlung of the Pinakothek, that set the standard for the scientific description of Greek pottery, recording the shapes and inscriptions with a unseen fastidousness. Jahn's study was the standard textbook on the history and chronology of Greek pottery for many years, yet in common with Gerhard he dated the introduction of the red figure technique to a century than was in fact the case; this error was corrected when the Aρχαιολογικη'Εταιρεια undertook the excavation of the Acropolis in 1885 and discovered the so-called "Persian debris" of red figure pots destroyed by Persian invaders in 480 BC. With a more soundly established chronology it was possible for Adolf Furtwängler and his students in the 1880s and 90s to date the strata of his archaeological digs by the nature of the pottery found within them, a method of seriation Flinders Petrie was to apply to unpainted Egyptian pottery.
Where the 19th century was a period of discovery and the laying out of first principles, the 20th century has been one of consolidation and intellectual industry. Efforts to record and publish the totality of public collections of vases began with the creation of the Corpus vasorum antiquorum under Edmond Pottier and the Beazley archive of John Beazley. Beazley and others following him have studied fragments of Greek pottery in institutional collections, have attributed many painted pieces to individual artists. Scholars have called these fragments disjecta membra and in a number of instances have been able to identify fragments now in different collections that belong to the same vase; the names we use for Greek vase shapes are a matter of convention rather than historical fact, a few do illustrate their own use or are labeled with their original names, others are the result of early archaeologists attempt to reconcile the physical object with a known name from Greek literature – not always successfully.
To understand the relation
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