On view
Ancient Mediterranean Art
Fish plate,
ca. 340–330 BCE
Attributed to the Asteas-Python Workshop
South Italian, Paestan
Classical Period, ca. 480–323 BCE
y1979-3
Fish plates get their name from the red-figure fish and sea creatures that adorn them. The distinctive shape—a broad floor sloping to a central depression, deeply overhanging rim, and stout ring foot—originated in Athens at the end of the fifth century BCE. The depression in the center may have trapped juices or held a sauce. Fish plates must have been exchanged between Greece and Italy because their forms were adopted by the potters of South Italy and Sicily. Roman vase-painters adorned these wares with regional species of fish rendered in vibrant colors and with extensive use of shading. The plate made in Paestum features two striped perch, bream, a shrimp, a scallop, and an ebullient octopus, while the other, made in Apulia, displays a similar array of sea creatures.
Information
Title
Fish plate
Dates
ca. 340–330 BCE
Maker
Attributed to the Asteas-Python Workshop
Medium
Red-figure ceramic
Dimensions
h. 5.8 cm, diam. 27.8 cm (2 5/16 x 10 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase
Object Number
y1979-3
Place Made
Europe, Italy, Paestum (southern Italy)
Period
Type
Subject
Museum purchase from Summa Galleries, Los Angeles, in 1979.
- Jane Cody, Catalogue 4: ancient vases, (Beverly Hills, CA: Summa Galleries, 1978)., no. 23
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1979," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 39, no. 1/2 (1980): p. 40-63., p. 56
- M. Mayo and K. Hamma, The art of south Italy: vases from Magna Graecia, (Richmond, VA: The Virginia Museum of Art, 1982)., no. 97
- A. D. Trendall, The red-figured vases of Paestum, (London: British School at Rome, 1987)., cat. no. 954, p. 235, pl. 114e. Asteas-Python Workshop; might well be by Asteas himself; by same painter as Naples 2550 and Toledy 77.30 (cat. nos. 953 and 956)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 24 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 298
- Seth D. Pevnick, Robert I. Curtis, et. al., Poseidon and the sea: myth, cult, and daily life, (Tampa, FL: Tampa Museum of Art; London: in association with D. Giles Limited, 2014)., p. 160; cat. no. 95
- Albert Bates, "Octopodal Pictoriality: The Self-Reflexivity of the Octopus in Graeco-Roman Art," Art History 47, no. 1 (2024): pp. 154-186., pp. 159-170; pl. 9
