Apulian vase painting was a regional style of Southern Italian vase painting from ancient Apulia in southeastern Italy. It comprises geometric pottery and red-figure pottery.
The legitimate Iron Age sequel to the Neolithic and Bronze Age culture of Matera and Molfetta has not yet been discovered and the pre-history of Daunia, Peucetia and Messapia begins to take shape as a coherent whole only with the 7th century BCE. Even then our knowledge is almost confined to the pottery, but it offers a rich field for study.For the main sections of this article, these primary sources have been consulted and referenced throughout the text: with its basic bibliography and notes, especially useful in the illustration of specific pottery; Stephen B. Luce, "Early Vases from Apulia", The Museum Journal, Volume X, December, 1919, Philadelphia: The University Museum, 1919, pp. 217-225; the essential texts by Michele Gervasio(it), Bronzi arcaici e ceramica geometrica nel Museo di Bari, Bari, 1921, for which see also E. Douglas Van Buren's synoptical review on : Classical Philology, Vol. 17, No. 2, Apr., 1922, pp. 176-179; also Michele Gervasio, I dolmen e la civiltà del bronzo nelle Puglie, Bari, 1913; Filli Rossi, Ceramica geometrica apula, Bretschneider Giorgio, 1981, as well as his Ceramica geometrica daunia, Dedalo, 1993. Fundamental work is the German Maximilian Mayer, Apulien vor und während der Hellenisierung, B.G. Teubner, 1914 as well as his specifically researched Molfetta und Matera, Karl W. Hiersemann, 1924. Generally, compare the requisite David Randall-MacIver, The Iron Age in Italy, Clarendon Press, 1927.
Geometric pottery
The subject of the painted pottery has been put on a scientific basis by the intensive studies of , who has identified and distinguished the products of the several provincial schools, and has established a scheme of dating which, with some slight rectifications and adjustments, due principally to Italian archaeologist Michele Gervasio, may be considered as final. The division of schools corresponds very closely to the old pre-Roman distribution of the region into three sections. Of these the most northern is Daunia, extending from the promontory of Gargano to the most southern point in the course of the river Aufidus; next to which is Peucetia, which for purposes of this classification may be said to begin at Bari and end at Egnatia. South of a line drawn from Egnatia to Taranto, the whole heel of Italy, with Lecce at its centre, is Messapia. Each of these regions has its own peculiar and well marked style in pottery. The chronology of all three is not precisely concurrent; actually the Daunian school is dated from about 600 to 450BC and the Peucetian from 650 to 500BC, while the Messapian only begins at 500BC and lasts for two centuries. Wholly distinct is a much later Daunian school confined to Canosa, which belongs to the fourth and third centuries and may be called late-Canosan.Cf. David Randall-MacIver, The Iron Age in Italy, cit.; see also Stephen Luce, "Early Vases from Apulia", The Museum Journal, loc. cit., pp. 191-220.
This chronology excludes any connection with the Mycenaean. Actually no single example of Mycenaean ware has ever been discovered between the Alps and the Gulf of Taranto. But at two places in Apulia, Mattinata on the promontory of Gargano and the Borgo Nuovo at Taranto, geometric pottery of the very early Iron Age has been found. These two isolated discoveries, however, have yet to be explained; they stand apart from all other Apulian products and their proper connections have not been ascertained. The pottery of Mattinata and of Borgo Nuovo is apparently a foreign importation and its date is several centuries earlier than that of the regular Apulian schools now to be described.
Apulian pottery schools
Daunian
Canosa and Ruvo have yielded the greatest quantity of early Daunian pottery, and were perhaps the principal, though not the only centers for its production. It is found over the whole of Daunia from Bitonto in the south to Lucera and Teanum in the north, occasionally in Picenum, and even in Istria. In Campania also the site of Suessula has yielded several vases, produced apparently under Daunian influence.
There are four principal forms. The first is a round-bottomed footless krater with side handles and a plate-like rim (cf. example 1); the second is a similar krater on a pedestal. This latter is the shape known in Picenum, where its occurrence at Novilara puts its date at least as early as 600BC. From the round-bottomed krater is evolved the most peculiar and characteristic product of Canosa, that is, the double-storied jar. The plate-like rim has been developed into a deep bowl, which becomes more and more exaggerated during the 5th century until eventually it takes up nearly half the height of the entire jar. Strange fanciful additions are then made in the way of plastic ornament. To the ordinary ring handles are added a third and even a fourth, of increasingly fantastic kind. They may take the shape of an animal's face, most like a cat or an owl, or be formed like a thumbless human hand, which had probably some talismanic value. The fourth principal shape of pot is that which is known in Greece as an askos (cf. example 2), derived originally from an ordinary goatskin, and know at an early date over much of Sicily and Italy, but perhaps introduced by the Greeks.See also D. Randall-MacIver, The Iron Age in Italy, cit., s.v. "Askos".
Rarer, but extremely characteristic of the Daunians, are elaborate grotesque ritual vases. One example is a ritual vase with a female figure opposite to the spout, in ceremonial dress with a fillet on her brow, long plaits of hair hanging down on her shoulders, and circular discs covering her ears. Instead of human figures, other examples have strange creatures with birds'-heads upon necks like serpents and other unusual experiments in zoomorphism (cf. also example 3, of an unpainted Daunian vessel). Apart from an occasional drawing of this kind, always quite schematic, the decoration of all Daunian vases is purely geometric. Squares, lozenges and triangles are the usual motives, arranged in panels of varying length and separated by vertical lines. Most of the decoration is placed on the upper half of the vase. In the school of Ruvo the fashion was to place a hanging trapezoidal figure on the lower half, but Canosa preferred horizontal bands or concentric circles on this otherwise empty field. Almost all the Daunian pottery was made by hand, but in a few of the finest kraters from Ruvo the wheel seems to have been used. The decorative designs were painted in two alternating colours, red and dark violet, generally but not always laid on a background of whitish slip.
Peucetian Entirely different from the Daunian pottery, both in spirit and in choice of shape and subject, is the Peucetian pottery. Fantastic ritual vases are unknown in Peucetia; kraters, bowls and jugs are the only forms permitted, and these are decorated in a style which is both simple and harmonious. There are two main classes of peucetian ware, the one painted in red and black (...), contemporary with imported Corinthian vases and considerably influenced by them, the other in plain black and white with a more restricted range of motives (cf. Gallery). There are four principal motives in the black and white, two of which, the swastika and the comb, overshadow the others. Swastikas began to appear at just the same period on pottery in the north of Italy, and are probably an imported conception from the Danube to the Balkans. The other chief motives are the festoon, and the zigzag. Cross-hatched lozenges are common to all these geometric schools but the Maltese cross, though only occasional, is peculiar to the Peucetians. This black and white ware goes back to 650BC and has a range of about 150 years from that point downwards.See esp. M. Gervasio, Bronzi arcaici e ceramica geometrica nel Museo di Bari, cit., 1921.
The sources of inspiration for the black and white class have been unsuccessfully sought in various places; and it seems fair to regard this ware as in the main an indigenous product. Daunians and Peucetians, dissimilar enough in all other respects, had each inherited a certain repertoire of geometric tradition which was widely current over the Mediterranean, but each converted it into a new style which expressed the particular temperament of an inventive and artistic race.M. Gervasio, Bronzi arcaici e ceramica geometrica nel Museo di Bari, loc. cit. With the red and black ware, the permeating Corinthian influence is readily identified, and vases of this kind have been found actually associated in the same graves with Corinthian. Here also credit must be given to the Peucetians potters for their ability in adopting new motives and transmuting them without slavish copying.
Messapian
The Messapian school shows far less originality than the other two. When it appears for the first time in the 5th century, the Messapian is already a mixed style, to a great extent Hellenised. Some traces of an earlier geometric tradition still survive, though overlaid and almost stifled by the foreign innovations. In the early 5th century clepsydra, lozenge and band, the old elements of the Italian geometric, are still in existence. But the uncontaminated geometric is very rare in Messapia; the native potter can hardly resist adding his zone of Greek ivy-leaves, a maeander, a rosette, or even a bird. The chief centres of manufacture for such ware (cf. example 4) were at Rugge (Rudiae), near Lecce, and Egnatia, each originally a Rhodian colony. The strongest Greek influence came therefore from Rhodian sources, though others may have had some share. The hallmark by which all Messapian pottery, except a little of the very earliest, can be detected, is the round disc about the size of a large coin at the stop and bottom of each handle. This peculiarity has caused the nickname of "trozzella" to be given to such forms (cf. example 5 and Gallery).The word "trozzella" is an Italianised form of the Salento dialect word tròzzula (), which means rowel/wheel. Besides these the only shapes generally employed are the krater with column or handles, the jug, and a simple kind of bowl.
Canosan