Introduction

The introduction sets out the aims of the volume: first, to analyse two-dimensional images of Greek vases, both graphic and photographic, created from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, highlighting the range of their styles and functions in a variety of artistic and scholarly contexts; second, to demonstrate that images of archaeological objects are not just illustrations, reflecting or complementing texts, but are themselves active producers of knowledge. There is an outline of what the volume can offer to different audiences (archaeologists, art historians, and classical reception scholars). There then follows a brief sketch of the history of the reception of Greek vases in modernity, dealing in turn with the main trends in art history, archaeology, classics, and classical reception studies. This is designed to provide a broad landscape within which to place one form of classical reception—two-dimensional depictions—with which the volume is concerned.