Figure Mascherate e Maschere Comiche Nella Ceramica Italiota e Siceliota

The subject of the book are the so-called Phlyax Vases (A. D. Trendall) and the other vases of Magna Graecia and Sicily on which only comic masks were represented. This composite figured production, usually analyzed with reference to the two fundamental iconographic strands that distinguish it, namely that relating to scenes in which one or more masked characters act and that relating, instead, to the reproduction of the comic mask in different contexts, has long been the subject of a...
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The subject of the book are the so-called Phlyax Vases (A. D. Trendall) and the other vases of Magna Graecia and Sicily on which only comic masks were represented. This composite figured production, usually analyzed with reference to the two fundamental iconographic strands that distinguish it, namely that relating to scenes in which one or more masked characters act and that relating, instead, to the reproduction of the comic mask in different contexts, has long been the subject of a heated debate originating from the painted images, framed by following different interpretative paths. They contributed to it, in the 4th century BC., the Lucanian, Apulian, Siceliote, Paestan and Campanian ceramic workshops, of which a substantial number of vases are preserved which are now framed, although in necessarily synthetic form, through a catalogue of over four hundred specimens and through the reference to their pictorial decorations in the red-figure and polychrome techniques, fundamentally inspired by the Attic comedy and widely considered in the international bibliography, to the information on the vase-painters and the workshops that produced them, to the proveniences of the preserved specimens from the colonies and indigenous centres, to their shapes and functions. The integrated consideration of the available data allows an update of the discussion on the problem, which has been able to benefit from the recent publication of important more selective scientific contributions and of a non-univocal methodological approach.