This innovative, fresh look at Greek painting combines a typical, comprehensive survey of the material culture – frescoes, painted surfaces, or panels – with an in-depth exploration of the ways in which the Greeks themselves appreciated this demanding art.

The book analyzes the techniques, styles, themes, and masters, as well as their admirers, clients, and critics. At the same time, the author discusses recent discoveries in archaeology, cultural studies, and art history to provide a comprehensive picture of a unique phenomenon in Greek culture, a famous art form that enjoyed a long afterlife.

In this context, this book is unique as it reflects new, interdisciplinary scholarly approaches to the material record, which it combines with a more traditional, historical approach to art. Drawing from a wide range of ancient sources – from Plato and Xenophon to Cicero, Pliny, Lucian, and Philostratus – the author examines the surviving works within their chronological context and in light of recent discoveries.

After an extensive discussion of painting in Chalcolithic Greece (Cyclades, Crete, Santorini, Mycenaean Greece), the book establishes a very readable narrative for all the technical, stylistic, iconographic, and aesthetic developments through the Ancient, Classical, and Greco-Roman periods, culminating in a study of Greco-Roman painting in the 2nd-3rd centuries AD.

The study thus covers all the significant milestones in the evolution of Greek painting from prehistory to the Roman era, as well as most of the surviving works (including many lesser-known or recently discovered ones). It also pays tribute to the work and individual contributions of most of the great masters of antiquity.

The introduction of the book offers a complete overview of the techniques and materials used in ancient painting, alongside modern techniques, scientific, and theoretical approaches to its study. The text is fully illustrated in color and is accompanied by an extensive bibliography and index. The Art of Painting in Ancient Greece is a scholarly monograph that will interest all lovers of Greek art, students of archaeology and art history, as well as any academic working on classical Greece.