This volume completes a series of four titles which comprehensively cover the development of Greek vases. One of the most intriguing things about Greek vase painting from the 11th to the 6th centuries BC is that it shows all the components of Greek art which were to culminate in the Classical styles of the 5th century BC. Geometric vases gave way by about 700 BC to the influence of the Near East and in this new Orientalizing period the Greeks learned how to tell a story in pictures. Early Greek vases display the Greek painter's craft at its most mathematical, its most colourful and most narrative, and are here set against the background of the history and culture of their day.