Fish Plate

Artist Asteas and Python Workshop (Greek)

Place of OriginItaly, Lucania, likely Paestum

Dateabout 340-330 BCE

DimensionsH 2 7/8 × Diam 12 1/2 (7.3 × 31.8 cm)
Base Diam: 6 1/4 in. (15.9 cm)

MediumWheel-thrown, slip-decorated earthenware with added white and yellow

ClassificationCeramics

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1977.30

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 02, Classic

DescriptionThis large, wheel-thrown earthenware plate has a turned-down rim, a low ring foot, and a shallow central recess. It is decorated in the red-figure technique on a black slip ground, with added white paint and dilute yellow glaze. The interior shows marine life: an octopus with white suckers, a sea bass, a comber, a Mediterranean rainbow wrasse, and a prized red mullet. Two scallops (or limpets) and two crayfish (or prawns) appear in added white; one is mostly lost from wear.

Label Text“Fish plates” like this, both large and small, were used to serve seafood. The depression in the center collected the highly flavored sauces that were popular. The surface is painted with an octopus, four fish, two crayfish (their white surfaces much abraded), and two scallops. The eyes, fins, and scales of the octopus and fish are rendered with a sketchy wash of black and added white over the natural clay-red bodies. The rim is painted with a band of ivy leaves and berries.Published ReferencesLuckner, Kurt T., The Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia, Richmond, 1982, no. 111, pp. 236-237, color frontispiece.

Boulter, Cedric G., and Kurt T. Luckner, Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, Toledo Museum of Art, fasc. 2, U.S.A., fasc. 20, Mainz, 1984, pl. 118.

McPhee, Ian and A.D. Trendall, Greek red-figured fish-plates, Basel, 1987, pp. 107, 108, pl. 376, 64/7.

Exhibition HistoryRichmond, Virigina Museum of Fine Arts; Tulsa, Philbrook Art Center; The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia, 1982-1983, no. 111.Comparative ReferencesSee also Cody, Jane M., Catalogue 4: Ancient Vases, Summa Galleries, Inc., Beverly Hills, 1978, no. 23 (a fish plate by the same painter now in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum).

cf. "Recent Acquisitions," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, 1980, vol. 39, p. 61.

cf. Frieburg, Germany, Galerie Günter Puhze, Kunst der Antike, Katalog 6, 1985, no. 232.