Sotades Painter

The Sotades Painter, so-called after the potter who signed himself "Sotades 11 on eight vases - three actually painted by the Sotades Painter - worked in Athens in the thirty or so years after the Persian Wars. (A period referred to by Martin Robertson in his chapter heading as "The Classical Revolution". Gisela Richter describes the years 475-450 B.C. as "Early Free Style" , a.s does Beazley. He however includes only the Niobid Painter, the Villa Giulia Painter and the Achilles Palnter in this category. He places Hermonax, the Penthesilea Painter and Sotades in the period of "Late Archaic Painters"). This post Persian War period, the time of Cimon's administration when Athens at the head of the Delian Confederacy rose steadily in power and in influence, was clearly too a time of great upheaval both socially and culturally. (Martin Robertson  refers to the evacuation of Athens in 480 B.C. as "that violent interruption" , which, he says, not only serves us for a convenient dating point, but must for the Athenians have helped to crystallise a change of spirit which was gradually taking place). The painters working during these years were breaking away gradually from the archaic traditions of the previous half centuxy, not only in the widespread adoption of the white-ground technique but also in the movement towards a more naturalistic rendering of anatomical features and drapery. Buschor proclaims the advent of a new era, which he describes as a time of progressive naturalism and at the same time a period of noble greatness of style and exalted types.