ABSTRACT

Now that a framework of painters and potters has been constructed (whether accepted in particular or not) and now that it provides a grid of chronological connections, more attention is once again being paid to subject matter, to the various images. And some of the new approaches have begun to divorce stylistic considerations from the study of content. It has recently been claimed that Tmage-making and iconography . . . leave the attribution of a pot a marginal issue, if not entirely irrelevant' (Beard 1986: 1013). Whether we agree with this or not (and I myself think there is a great danger in considering attribution an irrelevance to the study of image-making), it is time to turn the spotlight on the images - divine, heroic, human and fantastic - in the variety of contexts in which they are presented. We have

men and women, children, animals, and monsters, as well as the pantheon of deities; scenes from the heroic past of a mythological age

and of the human race in all its aspects - at war and at home, in the palaestra or in the women's quarters of their houses, at religious festivals or at banquets.