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Pinax


In the modern study of the culture of ancient Greece and Magna Graecia, a pinax (πίναξ) (plural pinakes - πίνακες) or a "board", denotes a votive tablet of painted wood, or terracotta, marble or bronze relief that served as a votive object deposited in a sanctuary or as a memorial affixed within a burial chamber. Such pinakes feature in the classical collections of most comprehensive museums.

To the ancient Greeks pinax seems also to have been a general term for a plate, but this is generally not followed in modern archaeological usage. In daily life pinax might equally denote a wax-covered writing tablet. In Christian contexts, painted icons ("images") are pinakes. In the theatre of ancient Greece, they were images probably usually painted on cloth, but also carved either in stone or wood, that were hung behind, and sometimes below, the stage area as scenery, or as permanent decoration. The term pinacotheca for a picture gallery derives from such usages.

When they are recovered by archaeologists, painted wooden pinakes have usually lost all but faint traces of their painted images - the Pitsa panels being the outstanding exception. Moulded terracotta pinakes were also brightly painted. Marble pinakes were individually carved, but terracotta ones were impressed in molds, and bronze ones might be repeatedly cast from a model from which wax and resin impressions were made, in the technique called lost wax casting.

A few elaborate gold plaques have survived from the 7th century BC, many made in Rhodes, with deity figures, especially Artemis, shown in an orientalizing Daedalic style.


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