The aesthetic value of Greek painted pottery has been recognized by J. J. Winckelmann in 1764. Not many years later, in 1772, the English Parliament acquired Sir William Hamilton's collection for the British Museum, which became the first museum to display this kind of art. Other countries followed this example, from France to Russia, from the Vatican to Germany, from Greece to the United States.

But there are other reasons as well for praising the value of Greek vases , the first being that they help us to reconstruct most of the history of painting, since only a few examples from the seventh and sixth century BC on clay tablets or marble slabs have been recovered up to now. All we know are the names of the greatest painters from Polygnotus to Apelles. There is also a careful description by Pausanias of the great wall painting by Polygnotus in the Lesche of the Cnidians in Delphi.

Other fields besides the history of painting may profit from the study of Greek vases. one of them is trade, since archaeologists have found specimens not only near the mouths of large rivers but even far away from them, and this is happening not only around the Mediterranean .

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian urn