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Dipylon Master
( fl c. 760–c. 735 BC). Greek vase painter. His work belongs to the first stage of the Late Geometric (LG) style, and he is named after the Dipylon cemetery in Athens, for which he and his workshop made many huge funerary vessels (see GREECE, ANCIENT, fig. 85). These vases were used to mark aristocratic graves and to receive libations for the dead (belly-handled amphorae for female burials, pedestalled kraters for male). All such monumental vessels are decorated with a prothesis scene in which the bier of the deceased is surrounded by mourners. On kraters, the prothesis includes a following of armed warriors and chariot teams; battle scenes, either on land or at sea, may occur elsewhere on the vase. Subsidiary zones contain rectilinear geometric ornament, with the key meander as an important motif. Amphorae may also be decorated with friezes of goats and deer, adapted from Levantine ivories and metal bowls. Most of the Dipylon vases were excavated in the late 19th century and are now in either Athens (N. Archaeol. Mus.) or Paris (Louvre). Some 50 vases have been attributed to the Dipylon Master’s workshop, and fine examples of the Dipylon Master’s own work include an amphora in Athens (N. Archaeol. Mus., 804) and a krater in Paris (Louvre, A 517). His career marks a sudden flourishing of large-scale figural drawing after the Dark Age, when representational motifs on pottery had been extremely rare.
Part of the Vase painters family
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