The art of signing in ancient Greece

Abstract

Can we talk about "art" in ancient Greece, or about "artists"? Although signatures on pots and sculpture have sometimes been treated like trademarks, there are good reasons for differentiating them and seeing signatures as one mark of the self-conscious "artist." A quantitative survey of signatures on sculpture and pots suggests that pots and sculpture were sometimes signed from the earliest date, and that signing shows no pattern of straightforward increase or decrease over time. Signatures prove to be part of a communication between the creator of the object and a viewer to whom the creator's identity matters. © 2010 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.