Fish Plate (400-370 BCE): Artwork and History

Fish Plate (400-370 BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Greek; Athens.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This footed plate was made to serve succulent morsels of grilled seafood, like the fish, mollusks, and other marine creatures that are painted on its surface. Greece and Italy are peninsulas projecting into seas brimming with marine life. A primary source of protein, seafood was a basic staple of the ancient Mediterranean diet; it remains so today. Keen observers of their subjects, ancient vase painters so accurately captured the shapes and markings of the fish they depicted that it is possible to identify most of them by species. This example is decorated with two pairs of large fish. A scallop attached to an outer band of a decorative pattern in the center separates a gilt head, on the left, from a fish known as king of the mullets, on the right. Opposite them is a lettered perch confronting a scorpion fish. Details of their anatomy were drawn with dilute glaze. Around them are shells, a small fish, and other creatures. A running wave pattern around the central concavity, with a gently sloped floor for collecting juices or serving sauces, recalls the sea, the source of the bounty.

Object facts

• Title: Fish Plate
• Date: 400-370 BCE
• Artist attribution: Greek; Athens
• Place of origin: Athens
• Medium: terracotta, red-figure
• Dimensions: 5.1 × 34 × 34 cm (2 × 13 3/8 × 13 3/8 in.)
• Type: Decorative Arts
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1889.98

Collection credit

Gift of Philip D. Armour and Charles L. Hutchinson

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.