The Craft of Centuripe Vases: Techniques, Colors, Patterns

Polychrome Centuripe ware is a specialty of the Hellenistic workshops of the ancient city of Kentoripai, in inland Sicily. It has caught scholarly attention since the beginning of the last century because of its formal and iconographic features, but it was not until the early 1970s that Paul Deussen, in his PhD dissertation, ventured to investigate workshop organization on the basis of a systematic reappraisal of morphological, decorative, and stylistic features. He recognized four different workshops with their own painters, whom he named after favorite subjects or decorations (Tendrill Altar Master, Gorgon Portrait Master, Medusa D-Veil Painter, Dionysos Painter, Dolphin Coroplast, Imitation Coroplast). While highlighting some objective characteristics, this general picture was nevertheless weakened by some interpretative fallacies and the lack of in-depth study of the technical features. Moreover, the state of conservation of the paintings (which were often barely legible or altered by modern restorations) further complicates their study. An interdisciplinary research project, on selected Centuripe vases kept in the archaeological museums of Syracuse and Palermo, sheds new light on technological and chromatic aspects of these vases through morphological and iconographic study closely coupled with archaeometric and computational imaging analyses. On the basis of this interdisciplinary approach, some groupings have been reconsidered in order to penetrate deeper into the production logic.