The Jena Painter was an

ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

vase painter, active in

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

around 400 BC. He mainly painted '' kylikes'' in the

red-figure Red-figure pottery () is a style of Pottery of ancient Greece, ancient Greek pottery in which the background of the pottery is painted black while the figures and details are left in the natural red or orange color of the clay. It developed in A ...

technique. His stylistic and chronological place was first determined by the British Classical archaeologist, John D. Beazley. Beazley chose the conventional name "Jena Painter" because a large proportion of the artist's surviving works were in the possession of

Jena University The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The university was established in 1558 and is c ...

. The majority of his 91 known vessels were discovered in the

Kerameikos Kerameikos (, ) also known by its latinization of names, Latinized form Ceramicus, is an area of Athens, Greece, located to the northwest of the Acropolis, Athens, Acropolis, which includes an extensive area both within and outside the ancient ci ...

, the potters' quarter of ancient Athens, in 1892. Many of his vessels were exported, for example to

Etruria Etruria ( ) was a region of Central Italy delimited by the rivers Arno and Tiber, an area that covered what is now most of Tuscany, northern Lazio, and north-western Umbria. It was inhabited by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization that f ...

and North Africa. The Jena Painter appears to have had two assistants whose work is described as style B and style C. The Jena Painter would paint the internal images of bowls, and the style B assistant their outsides. The work of the style C assistant is known only from, bowl ''skyphoi'' and footless bowls. In contrast to his assistants' rather casual drawings, the Jena Painter is distinguished by his fine and careful drawing style and the vividness of his compositions. The

Q Painter Q, or q, is the seventeenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pronounced , most commonly spelled ''cue'', but al ...

and the Diomedes Painter worked in the same workshop as the Jena Painter.

Bibliography

* John D. Beazley. ''Attic Red Figure Vase Painters''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963. *Werner Müller. ''Keramik des Altertums. Vasen aus der Sammlung Antiker Kleinkunst Jena''. Leipzig, 1963. * John Boardman. ''Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Classical Period''. London, 1989, p. 169f. *Verena Paul-Zinserling. ''Der Jena-Maler und sein Kreis: zur Ikonologie einer attischen Schalenwerkstatt um 400 v. Chr.'' Mainz 1994. *Lehrstuhl für Klassische Archäologie und Sammlung Antiker Kleinkunst der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Angelika Geyer (ed.)): ''Der Jenaer Maler: eine Töpferwerkstatt im klassischen Athen.'' Wiesbaden 1996. . {{Authority control 5th-century BC births 4th-century BC deaths Ancient Greek vase painters Anonymous artists of antiquity 5th-century BC Athenians Year of birth unknown