Wild Goat Style

The Wild Goat Style was a form of vase painting produced in the east Greece, namely the south and eastern Ionian islands, between circa 650 to 550 BCE. Example have been found notably at the sites of Chios, Miletos and Rhodes. The styles owes its name to the predominant motif found on such vases: friezes of goats. The style developed the technique introducted during the Orientalizing Period of rendering the heads of figure in outline by applying it to the whole of a figure. Thus where previously an image was a silhouette the wild goat Style allowed a greater representation of detail and marked a step forward in the progress towards naturalism.

Goats are not the only creatures depicted on such vases; in common with other Orientalizing pottery hares, lions, hounds, griffens and sphinxes are also to be found along with favoured filling devices like intertwining lines and dots or a checker pattern. The variety of ornamentation makes a careful distinction of a number of phases in the development of the style possible which in turn has been used to date the founding of Greek colonies in the Levantine and North Africa.

References

*K.Brown, The question of Near Eastern textile decoration of the Early first millennium BC as a source for Greek Vase Painting of the Orientalizing style (1989).
*R.M.Cook, East Greek Pottery (1997)

External links

* [http://www2.ocn.ne.jp/~greekart/vase/h_east1_e.html Detailed history of the style]