This book examines Greek vase-paintings that depict humorous, burlesque, and irreverent images of Greek mythology and the gods. Many of the images present the gods and heroes as ridiculous and ugly. While the narrative content of some images may appear to be trivial, others address issues that are deeply serious. When placed against the background of the religious beliefs and social frameworks from which they spring, these images allow us to explore questions relating to their meaning in particular communities. Throughout, we see indications that Greek vase-painters developed their own comedic narratives and visual jokes. The images enhance our understanding of Greek society in just the same way as their more sober siblings in "serious" art. David Walsh is a Visiting Research Scholar in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at The University of Manchester.

This richly illustrated book is a comprehensive study of visual humour in ancient Greece, emphasising works created in Athens and Boeotia.

In his new book, Professor Martin Robertson - author of A History of Greek Art (CUP 1975) and A Shorter History of Greek Art (CUP 1981) - draws together the results of a lifetime's study of Greek vase-painting, tracing the history of figure-drawing on Athenian pottery from the invention of the 'red-figure' technique in the later archaic period to the abandonment of figured vase-decoration two hundred years later. The book covers red-figure and also work produced over the same period in the same workshops in black-figure and other techniques, especially that of drawing in outline on a white ground. The book is intended as a companion volume to Sir John Beazley's The Development of Attic Black-figure (originally published in 1951 by California University Press), and as an examination and defence of Beazley's methods and achievements. This book is a major contribution to the history of Greek vase-painting and anyone seriously interested in the subject - whether scholar, student, curator, collector or amateur - will find it essential reading.

The frames of classical art are often seen as marginal to the images that they surround. Traditional art history has tended to view framing devices as supplementary 'ornaments'. Likewise, classical archaeologists have often treated them as tools for taxonomic analysis. This book not only argues for the integral role of framing within Graeco-Roman art, but also explores the relationship between the frames of classical antiquity and those of more modern art and aesthetics. Contributors combine close formal analysis with more theoretical approaches: chapters examine framing devices across multiple media (including vase and fresco painting, relief and free-standing sculpture, mosaics, manuscripts and inscriptions), structuring analysis around the themes of 'framing pictorial space', 'framing bodies', 'framing the sacred' and 'framing texts'. The result is a new cultural history of framing - one that probes the sophisticated and playful ways in which frames could support, delimit, shape and even interrogate the images contained within.