Dinos

History

A grc was a large, deep bowl, with a round bottom and a wide mouth. grc were used both for cooking and for mixing wine with water. The term is modern; in ancient Greece, the word grc was used for a drinking-cup, while the term grc was used for the rounded bowl.

grc were often made with wheel-turned stands, and could be made either in metal or in terracotta: it is likely that the metal examples were designed for cooking, while the ceramic ones were more likely to be used (similarly to kraters) for mixing wine at symposia. grc are known from the seventh to the fifth centuries BCE: the oldest known Athenian black-figure example is the name vase of the Gorgon Painter, from around 580 BCE. Literary references to them are found in the Iliad and the works of Aeschylus and Aristophanes.

The Dinos Painter, active in Athens during the second half of the fifth century BCE, takes his name from the type of vase characteristic of his work. A grc painted and signed by Sophilos, made around 580–570 BCE, depicts the wedding of Peleus and Thetis and includes the earliest known depiction of the Muses. Sophilos may have dedicated another of his grc, now in fragments, to the gods on the Acropolis of Athens. His grc are the earliest known works of ancient Greek pottery to include encircling friezes of humanoid figures.

Exekias also made and signed a black-figure grc, now in the British Museum; another grc is known to have been the work of the Berlin Painter. The grc was the main product, slightly ahead of plates, of a school of potters active in Aeolis, which flourished in the first quarter of the sixth century BCE. These artists included the London Painter, and exported their works to Naucratis in Egypt and to Greek colonies on the Black Sea.

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