Paestan Addenda

Extract

Since the publication of my Supplement to Paestan Pottery and the short Post-script covering the finds of 1952, some 300 new red-figured vases have come to light as a result of further excavations by Dr. P. C. Sestieri at Paestum in the area around the so-called Basilica and the Temple of Poseidon and of the systematic opening up of the huge fourth century necropoleis to the south of the city at Fuscillo, Spinazzo and Tempa del Prete and to the north in the Gontrade Arcioni, Andriuolo, Laghetto and Gaudo. Some of these sites have yielded painted tombs of the highest importance for our knowledge of fourth-century painting and for the parallels they offer in both subject and style to contemporary vase decoration, and the quantity of pottery they have produced increases more than fivefold the number of vases of certain Paestan provenience and establishes beyond question the location of this fabric at Paestum. Most of the vases belong either to the workshop of Asteas and Python or to the later workshops of the Painters of Naples 1778 and 2585, but one completely new artist—the Floral Painter—has emerged, as well as a good deal more in the Apulianising style of the end of the fourth century, the existence of which was first noted as a result of the finds in 1952.