François Vase
An Attic mixing bowl with over 270 figures in black-figure painting, signed by potter and painter.
The vase was made in Athens around 570 BC and found in an Etruscan tomb in 1844. It is one of the first vases signed by both potter and painter. It is in the Museo Archeologico in Florence.
Materials: Fired clay with black gloss
Manufacture: Thrown in sections; the figures painted in a slip that turned black in firing, the details incised.
The friezes in bands round the whole vessel, like a strip cartoon with names written beside the figures.
The signatures: ‘Ergotimos made me’ and ‘Kleitias painted me’.