Pinax

TOCleftIn the culture of ancient Greece and Magna Graecia, a "pinax" (πίναξ) (plural "pinakes" - πίνακες) or a "board", denotes a votive tablet of painted wood, [When they are recovered by archaeologists, painted wooden "pinakes" have usually lost all but faint traces of their painted images. Moulded terracotta "pinakes" were also brightly painted.] terracotta, marble or bronze that served as a votive object deposited in a sanctuary or as a memorial affixed within a burial chamber. 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 colored images either carved out of stone or wood or even made of cloth that were hung in the scene as background.

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. At Locri thousands of carefully-buried "pinakes" have been recovered, most of them from the sanctuary of Persephone or that of Aphrodite.

The Roman architect Vitruvius mentions the "pinakes" in the cellas of temples, and even in the possession of private persons. Such a collection was a "pinakothek", [Compare "bibliothek", a library, which provides the designation in several modern European languages.] which is a modern German term for an art museum, such as the Alte Pinakothek of Munich.

The Alexandrian poet and curator of the Library of Alexandria Callimachus formed a kind of index, or "map picture" of the library's contents, which he named Pinakes. [ [http://dc-mrg.english.ucsb.edu/conference/2002/documents/christian_jacob.html Christian Jacob, "From Alexandria to Alexandria: Scholarly Interfaces of a Universal Library" 2002.] ] "Pinakes" feature in the classical collections of most comprehensive museums.

ee also

*ex-voto
*grave goods
*votive site

Notes

References

* Ulrich Hausmann, 1960. "Griechischen Weihereliefs" (Berlin)

External links

* [http://persephones.250free.com/pinakes.html "Pinakes: ancient votive tablets"]
* [http://www.stoa.org/diotima/essays/fc04/Skinner.html Marilyn B. Skinner, "Nossis and Women’s Cult at Locri"]
* [http://www.clevelandart.org/exhibcef/mg/html/1254180.html (Cleveland Museum of Art) "Pinakes"] Terracotta dedicatory "pinakes" from the sanctuary of Persephone at Locri Epizephirii.