The Late Mannerists in Athenian Vase-Painting

The Late Mannerists were Athenian vase-painters working in the fifth century BC. They specialized in shapes used during the symposium, and had a particular flair for story telling. Their unusual style of painting combines elements of the Late Archaic period with characteristics of the Classical period.

The potter and painter Myson founded the Mannerist workshop at the end of the sixth century BC. The Mannerists were his pupils and pupils of his pupils, and specialized in columnkraters, hydriai, and pelikai. The workshop was unusually long-lived and was active through the whole of the fifth century and the first decade of the fourth.The style of painting and the choice of some subjects are curiously old-fashioned. A number of pictures show rare themes such as the Death of Prokris, Odysseus and Nausicaa, and Orestes in Delphi. Other paintings give an unusual twist to well-known stories. The Mannerists were influenced by theatrical productions, extant wall paintings, and the works of other vase-painters.The workshop provides important clues for the chronology of Attic vase-painting, for example drawing reflecting Pheidias'' Athena Parthenos, and Aeschylos'' plays Sphinx, Eumenides, and Seven against Thebes.