artnet.com
Search the whole artnet database
 
 
  Services  | The Grove Dictionary of Art

  Research Library groveart.com Artist Biographies
Materials and Techniques
Styles and Movements
 
 

Sophilos

( fl c. 600–c. 570 BC). Greek vase painter. Like other contemporary Athenian Black-figure artists, he imitated the Corinthian animal style, decorating his vases mainly or entirely with mixed processions of wild, tame and mythological creatures. Such friezes were easily copied, so that it is often difficult to ascribe them to specific artists. However, between 40 and 46 large pots or fragments are attributed to Sophilos. His animal friezes are executed in a lively and careless style, so that his importance is due to his rarer many-figured friezes depicting mythological subjects. These are more ambitious and more detailed than any earlier pictures of myths, and several are signed by the artist, making Sophilos the first Greek vase painter whose real name is known.

Part of the Vase painters family

There are more than 45,000 articles in The Grove Dictionary of Art. To access the rest of this article, including the bibliography, subscribe to www.groveart.com. To find out more about this subject, click on a related article below and subscribe to www.groveart.com

  Reproduced by kind permission of Macmillan Publishers Limited, publishers of The Grove Dictionary of Art.
  © Copyright 2000 Macmillan Publishers Limited.
site map  about us  contact us  investor relations  services  terms & conditions artnet.com | artnet.de | artnet.fr
   ©2010 artnet - The art world online. All rights reserved. artnet is a registered trademark of artnet Worldwide Corporation, New York, NY.  


search artists: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z