( fl c. 750–c. 730 BC). Greek vase painter. He was active in Athens during the first phase of the Late Geometric style (LGI). He is named after a monumental pedestalled krater (Athens, N. Archaeol. Mus., 990), published in 1872 by G. Hirschfeld shortly after its discovery in the Dipylon cemetery. Like several other more fragmentary kraters by the same vase painter, it is decorated with funerary imagery and was designed to mark an aristocratic male burial. The main scene shows the ekphora ceremony, in which the dead man on the bier is conveyed by waggon to the grave, attended by mourners. A retinue of chariots, driven by armed warriors, fills the zone below. As on other important vases by this painter or from his workshop, geometric ornament plays only a subsidiary part in the decoration. The Hirschfeld krater is contemporary with the later monumental vases from the Dipylon Master’s workshop, but the style of the figures in silhouette is quite different. Female mourners are distinguished by short strokes for breasts; their heads are in profile, with beaky noses, and eyes reserved and dotted. As they tear their hair, their bent arms and broad shoulders form a rectangle; their chests are frontal, forming concave equilateral triangles. The legs are shown with calves in profile but frontal thighs, thus appearing bow-legged. Chariot horses have a stiff and frozen look, with insubstantial bodies, trumpet-shaped muzzles and elongated cannon bones. Other vases from the Hirschfeld Painter’s workshop depict goats equally idiosyncratically; these are either standing or kneeling, but always looking to the front with large, inquiring eyes. Among the filling ornaments, dotted motifs prevail.

Part of the Vase painters family

• Hirschfeld Painter
  • Greece, ancient, §V, 3(ii): Geometric pottery: Attic