Achilles and Ajax

Achilles and Ajax Playing a Game
Exekias, c. 540-530 BCE

In the art of Ancient Greece, painted pots played a predominant role.  While the many variations of ceramic vessels (undecorated) fulfilled everyday household purposes, the same standardized styles of pots (beautifully painted) served much more than their utilitarian roles by showcasing "scenes of human interaction evoking a story", a characteristic tradition of Ancient Greek art in general.  On occasion, the creators of these masterful works would leave their signature, though oftentimes the potter and the painter were not the same.  In the case of Achilles and Ajax Playing a Game, however, the amphora (a large, generally all-purpose storage jar, perhaps used most notably for wine) was signed by Exekias as both potter and painter.  

This particular vessel belongs to the Archaic period and the black-figure tradition.  During this period, Athens became known as the center for the manufacture and trade of pottery in all of Greece, and the Corinthian tradition of painting black figures upon a reddish background (hence the name "black-figure") distinguished itself as the principal style of decoration.  Exekias, perhaps the most famous of Athenian black-figure painters and like many of the artists of this time period, created representations of figures drawn from Greek mythology.  This amphora shows a relaxed Achilles and Ajax, heroes of Homer's Trojan War, playing a game of dice.  On the right-hand side of the composition, Ajax calls out the number three as Achilles, on the left, calls out the number four, signaling his victory in their leisurely game.  This picture of ease between two mighty warriors would have been mournfully ironic to Greek viewers familiar with their story and painful partings, Achilles' death in battle and Ajax's subsequent suicide.  Aside from its symbolic weight, however, the image itself is also compositionally pleasing.  The careful contours of the bodies, emphasized in importance against the red background, and dynamic diagonals display the Greeks' aptitude for creating exceptional artwork even on difficult surfaces (notice the complete gracefulness with which the figures conform to the amphora's swollen shape). Exekias' amphora follows the Greek tradition of idealism in standards of human supremacy and beauty, both in subject matter and design.  The richly textured and majestic heroes of myth in this work are merely one example of the many portrayals of human interaction through these carefully crafted vessels.