Apulian Vase-Painting of the Fourth Century BC: Graeco-Italic “Translations”

The author deals with the problem of “translation” in Apulian vase-painting of the Late Classical period. Attic patterns of ceramic forms and compositions being produced at the beginning of South Italiote vase-painting (at Tarent, in particular), should have been “translated” into Italic “language” (the Ilioupersis painter) of the rich indigenous clientele. In their turn, the Italic artisans tended to approach their production to Hellenic models; they taught its complicated thesaurus and created a new Helleno-Italic language of art (the Arpi painter) which became later the main bearer of the Classical tradition in the Mediterranean and Europe of the Middle Ages and Renaissance times.