Apulian vase painting

Example 1 – Daunian jug

Example 2 – Daunian terracotta askos (flask with a spout and handle over the top)

Example 3 – Daunian luxury vase (unpainted)

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.[1]

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.[1][3]

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.[1]

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.[1][4]

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.[5] 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.

Example 4 – Messapian ware

Example 5 – Trozzella, 4th century BC

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).[6] Besides these the only shapes generally employed are the krater with column or handles, the jug, and a simple kind of bowl.

Carefully to be distinguished from these three schools is the late-Canosan, which has nothing in common with the earlier Daunian school that also flourished at Canosa, except the shape of the vase (see Gallery). This survived simply because it was used for certain rituals which had not changed, but all the details of its decoration are different. The date of all the late-Canosan pottery is 3rd and 4th century. The evidence of the tombs shows that Canosa became the centre of a brilliant Apulian renaissance in the 4th century, and during the third it was an important factor in the art history of the Hellenistic world, becoming especially famous for large rococo works in polychrome terracotta, huge vases with centaurs and Cupids springing from the sides, surmounted very often by a Niobe, a Hermes, or some other statuette. At Naples there is a large collection of these, and of magnificent vases painted with scenes from Greek mythology and history. Documentary evidence proves that this collection, including the famous Darius vase and all the splendid examples from Canosa now at Munich, came from the same tombs as the humbler askoi twin-situlae and "sphagia" (see Gallery). If the decoration of these is examined, it will be seen that the whole spirit of the late Canosan is entirely changed from that of the earlier Daunian school. In place of the lozenge, band and triangle, the primitive motives of the geometric repertoire, there are meanders, frets, vine leaves and egg patterns, all designs appearing on the contemporary Greek pottery. The domination of Greek fashion is complete. But the irrepressible individuality of the Daunian breaks out in the large statuettes.[1]

• 
  Apulian Askos
• 
  Daunian subgeometric duble-handle pot
• 
  Peucetian Krater
• 
  Messapian Trozella
• 
  Canosan Krater