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Greek Vase Painting Resources

Online Resources

Beazley Archive Pottery Database (BAPD)

The BAPD is the world’s largest database of ancient Greek painted pottery. It contains records of more than 130,000 ancient pots and 250,000 images. Nearly all of the pots included were made during the 6th to 4th centuries BCE, and about three quarters of them were made in Athens. This database has its origins in the physical Beazley Archive, which is kept in the Classical Art Research Centre in Oxford.

Hosted by the University of Oxford’s Classical Art Research Centre on behalf of the Union Académique Internationale (UAI), the CVA consists of a series of high-quality catalogues of mostly ancient Greek painted pottery in collections around the world. The first fascicule appeared in 1922 and since then more than 400 have been published, illustrating more than 100,000 vases in 24 countries.

A brief introduction to vase studies and a list of general overviews, authored by Tyler Jo Smith. Oxford Bibliographies hosts introductions to a variety of related topics in Classics including Greek history, epigraphy, art, architecture, painting, sculpture, and more.

The Panoply Vase Animation Project creates animations from real ancient artifacts to help people enjoy and understand ancient cultures and for instructors to use in teaching ancient topics, visual literacy, and how to use artifacts as evidence. In addition to animations, Panoply hosts a variety of other resources including information about vase shapes and educational slides for topics like museum curation and Greek mythology.

WebLIMC.org is a digital collection of over 50,000 ancient objects, documents, and photographs that were assembled in the course of the preparation of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC; 1981–1999 and 2009) and the Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum (ThesCRA; 2004–2014). Digital resources are provided by Digital LIMC and LIMC France.

General Bibliography

Bérard, C., et al. 1984. La cité des images: Religion et société en Grèce antique. Paris: Fernand Lathan.

Boardman, J. 2001. The History of Greek Vases. London: Thames and Hudson.

Cook, R. M. 1997. Greek Painted Pottery. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.

Lissarrague, F. 2001. Greek Vases: The Athenians and Their Images. Edited by B. Eskenazi, translated by K. Allen. New York: Riverside.

Nørskov, V., L. Hannestad, C. Isler-Kerényi, and S. Lewis, eds. 2009. The World of Greek Vases. Rome: Edizioni Quasar.

Oakley, J. H., et al., eds. 1997–2014. Athenian Potters and Painters. Vols. I–III. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Osborne, R. 2018. The Transformation of Athens: Painted Pottery and the Creation of Classical Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Robertson, M. 1992. The Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sparkes, B. A. 1991. Greek Pottery: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.