Ancient painted pottery: Beazley method and attribution problems

The article is dedicated to theoretical and methodological aspects of attribution of the ancient painted pottery. The founder of attribution of the Greek painted pottery Sir John Beazley created a so-called «Beazley method» on the base of methods of attribution, which art-experts, including J. Morelly, applied to the old European painting in the 19th century. The article deals with both particular and general aspects of attribution of the Greek painted pottery, beginning with the importance of certain elements in the whole system of visual analysis of the vase-painting and ending with the problems of sense of attribution, consistency of the «Beazley method», possibility of applying it to vase-painting from other workshops apart from Attic, problems of applying technical and visual methods of analysis to the painted pottery.