Getty Museum
Attic Black-Figure Kylix
Creator
Theseus PainterArtist
All works by this person →The Theseus Painter decorated vases in Athens in the period from about 510 to 490 B.C. Long after most vase-painters had switched to red-figure, he worked in the black-figure technique. A versatile and innovative artist, he decorated a wide variety of vase shapes but specialized in skyphoi and lekythoi. On many of his works he covered the vase with a white-ground slip before adding the black-figur
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 525–500 B.C.
- Medium
- Terracotta
- Culture
- Greek (Attic)
- Department
- Vessels
- Institution
- Getty Museum
This Athenian black-figure kylix or cup depicts a fish market. On one side, a fishmonger prepares a tuna for sale. He is about to carve up the fish on a chopping block. Pieces already cut from another fish lie on the table behind him and a fish head rests at his feet. On the other side, another man carries a tuna, perhaps freshly caught. *Use a tail-cut from a female tuna. . . . Slice it and bake it to a turn, adding a little salt and oil. Eat the slices hot, dipping them in piquant sauce. It is good also if you eat it plain . . . But if you serve it sprinkled with vinegar it is perfection.* This was the culinary advice of Archestratus of Gela, a gourmet who lived in one of the Greek colonies in Sicily around the mid-300s B.C. Given Greece's extensive coastline, fish were important in the Greek diet, but depictions of fishing and the sale of fish are rare in Greek art.
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