CHAPTER IV.THE BLACK-FIGURED STYLE

PLATE XXV.Fig. 51. CYCLADIC JUG WITH GRIFFIN’S HEAD FROM ÆGINA.

PLATE XXV.

Fig. 51. CYCLADIC JUG WITH GRIFFIN’S HEAD FROM ÆGINA.

generally birds, also feeding animals, heraldic or fighting lions, pairs of panthers in heraldic scheme, in the characteristic partial silhouette, which renders the head and parts of the body in outline, but the skins with black or white spots according to the technique. The Ram jug from Aegina (Fig.28), the exact attribution of which is uncertain, is at any rate closely allied.

This charming class has been called Euboic, but no Euboic find substantiates the name. It has hitherto come to light only on the islands of the Aegean, especially Delos-Rheneia, Thera and Melos. Delos also supplied the earlier Geometric stages, but as the central meeting place of the islanders, it received so many different elements that it appears venturesome to rename the ‘Euboic’ ‘Delian’ ware, since a closely-allied pottery, which would have the same right to this name, can be probably distinguished from it. This class, which has a predilection for decoratively applied horse-heads, and like the Protocorinthian, has the habit of putting red and white stripes on parts of the vase which are covered with black, at an early date supplied figured representations without field ornaments; it seems to have been occasionally imitated in the Euboic colony of Kyme, which otherwise is completely under Protocorinthian influence. The similarity of the animal representations to Cretan metal work and of the fine griffin head (Fig.51) to those of bronze cauldrons from Olympia, strengthens the above-mentioned relations of the Euboic-Delian style to the Cretan and Argive.

Thera is not in question as the home of these vases. This island had its own very important fabrication in Geometric times, which like the Attic sticks obstinately for a long time to the old style, and as long as it exists, never allows the new elements, which often are strongly suggestive of metal patterns, to get the upper hand. In Melos it has beenperhaps correct to localize an important manufactory of which the products have been chiefly found in this island and in the neutral sphere of Delos-Rheneia. The heavy double spirals with gusset-like filling, which this style prefers to the other Orientalizing ornaments, and which it puts in to fill space, arranges in stripes, puts one on the top of another as ‘the volute-tree,’ or quadruples as ‘the volute-cross,’ give this pottery a peculiar stamp. The style is most finely represented by the big weighty amphorae which in shape and technique of the light ground for painting on are akin to the above-mentioned Cycladic vases, but are finely decorated on neck and body with representations, and also show the same feeling for rich decoration in the luxuriant filling ornamentation. The Melian delight in representation, like the Attic, gives us an insight into the growth of the figured style. The rows of geese (Fig.52), the big sphinxes and panthers, the horses ranged heraldically on either side of a volute-cross, the favourite framed horse-busts show the well-known partial silhouette; and the female busts, the confronted riders, the duellists flanked by women, the gods facing each other or driving in chariots, the ‘Persian Artemis’ carrying a lion, the free legendary scenes reflect in technique and drawing the same development which we followed at Athens. We can assign to about the date of later Phaleron vases a specimen like the Apollo vase (Fig.52), which colours light brown the male body, and in the drawing of animals leads from the old partial silhouette to the later technique. The fine ‘Marriage of Herakles’ (Fig.53) marks a great step in advance, not only by the complete taking over of the black-figured animal style, and the superposition of many details in white on horses and patterns of garments, but above all by the lively rendering of the paratactic composition and the removal of all Geometric traces in the rendering of

PLATE XXVI.Fig. 52. ARTEMIS, APOLLO, ARGE AND OPIS: FROM A “MELIAN” AMPHORA.

PLATE XXVI.

Fig. 52. ARTEMIS, APOLLO, ARGE AND OPIS: FROM A “MELIAN” AMPHORA.

PLATE XXVII.Fig. 53. HERAKLES AND IOLE (?): FROM A “MELIAN” AMPHORA.

PLATE XXVII.

Fig. 53. HERAKLES AND IOLE (?): FROM A “MELIAN” AMPHORA.

Fig. 54. EARLY RHODIAN JUG.

bodies. The heraldic motives have given place to more natural ones; the male type is not merely distinguished by brown painting from the female. The shape of the vase is more compact, the decoration more tectonic, the goose frieze on the shoulder edge is replaced by the tongue pattern, which also as garment edging drives out the old zig-zag. But the filling ornaments are as copious as ever, and the step, which the Nessos vase took in the technique of the figures, has not yet been taken. Thus the ‘Melian’ vases take us lower down in the 7th century than the other Cycladic products, but not yet to its close.

Perhaps new finds will bring the continuation of these manufactories and build a bridge to the style of the 6th century. If we get them, we may hope for a completion of the picture here given, a clearing up of the relations of the manufactories to one another and to the East and West, and evidence as to their localization. For even the Melian origin of the ‘Melian’ vases is not certain: this manufactory too, to judge by the chief locality of the finds, would have to be moved to Delos, the little inconspicuous island, where Leto bore her twins Apollo and Artemis, on which the whole Ionic world gathered to celebrate its divine fellow-citizens. We can trace something of this festal spirit and devotional pride of the insular Ionians in the Apollo and Artemis of the Melian vase, of course in a humbler way than in the magnificent hymn of the Ionian bard.

The technique of the white ground for painting and much in the filling ornament and the animal-drawing unites these insular vases with the artistic circle of S. W. Asia Minor and the adjacent islands, through which obviously, as well as through Crete, Oriental decorative motives principally found their way into Greece. The impulses which guided the weak Geometric style of this district into new paths can with certainty be traced to metal work, especiallyPhoenician bowls, and to textile products. Miletus, the head of East Ionic civilization, had a flourishing textile industry in the 7th century, the decoration of which was quite under the spell of the East. An attempt has been made to fix at Miletus a manufactory, the extension of which coincides exactly with the commercial sphere of this great maritime town; the coast of Asia Minor and the adjacent islands, the colonies on the Black Sea and in the Delta are the most important, a secondary part is played by the Cyclades and the Italo-Sicilian area, but the Greek mainland is unaffected. But since Miletus need not have done more than distribute, just as Corinth did for the Protocorinthian ware, since closely allied and almost inseparable wares were made in several places, and the bulk of these vases were found in Rhodes, we may retain the traditional name ‘Rhodian.’

The transition from the Geometric phase (p. 26) to the developed style of animal decoration can be to some extent followed. We see, for instance, the old shape of the jug (Fig.22) become metallically rounded, the cable on the neck drive out the old zig-zags, and on the shoulder two animals antithetically flank the central metope (Fig.54). The stiff division into metopes of the shoulder stripe is next dropped, the animals and fabulous beings of the East are placed heraldically one on either side of a central vegetable motive, and under this heraldic band, in obvious rivalry with textile work adorned in bands, continuous friezes of animals in rows, of dogs pursuing hares, of grazing wild goats and deer, of running goats, which in spite of their decorative character often testify to a very fresh observation of nature. Bands of different ornament, cables, and continuous loops, Geometric motives in metope-like arrangement, especially the upright garland of lotus buds and flowers, are added to

PLATE XXVIII.Fig. 55. RHODIAN JUG.Fig. 56. LATE RHODIAN JUG.

PLATE XXVIII.

Fig. 55. RHODIAN JUG.Fig. 56. LATE RHODIAN JUG.

Fig. 57. EUPHORBOS PLATE FROM RHODES: MENELAOS AND HECTOR FIGHTING OVER THE BODY OF EUPHORBOS.

the animal friezes: the last-named ornament generally takes the place of the rays round the bottom of the vase. With these decorative stripes the Rhodian style at the height of its production likes to cover the whole surface of its favourite jugs with ‘rotelle’ on the handles (Figs.55and56), its necked amphorae, bowls and other vessels, and in this way arrives at a delicate and rich carpet-like effect: the equipoise between the animal silhouettes neatly placed on the white ground, coloured red and white, and the vigorous clear ornamentation, the showing of the ground through in delicate details where colour is purposely omitted, the well-distributed filling ornaments, into which sometimes small birds with an absence of pedantry are introduced, are all very satisfactory to the decorative sense: the distinction of the shoulder stripe by the heraldic element prevents the impression that the surface of the vase is too uniformly cut up. The accumulation of animal friezes, and the heraldic arrangement of Orientalizing animals round a vegetable combination of ornaments, are features which we have already found in Western art; but while these elements became prominent there at a time when the incised full silhouette was in exclusive possession of the field, when plant decoration took more abstract shapes, and filling patterns were reduced to the rosette, the culmination of the Rhodian animal-frieze vases falls in the pictorial period, when the plant decoration is naturalistic and filling ornamentation is abundant.

A uniform band decoration did not exclusively prevail. A group of jugs, which by its more tense and profiled shape and by a transition to the later floral ornamentation shows itself to be progressive, and which gradually replaces the cable of the neck by the broken so-called ‘metope’ maeander (Fig.56), leaves out of the black body of the vase only a narrow stripe with the maeander reduced to pothooks, and surrounds the bottom of the vase with long rays. But beside this method the other certainly persists. Its tenacious life is proved by vases like the Paris cauldron (Fig.58) and its parallels from Naukratis, which show the archaic Rhodian band style alongside of the developed incised animal style on the same vase. In these hybrids which are essentially akin to the vases of Andokides (p. 115) the old stylizing of the figures is giving way, the rich store of filling motives is yielding to the prevalence of the rosette, the vegetable ornamentation is exchanging its vigorous plant-like appearance for thinner and more abstract shapes, which however take on a freer swing and submit to richer variations, the most important of which is the continuous tendril. At the same time the old technique of painting and leaving void spaces continues to be cultivated at a time, when elsewhere and probably also in the East the black-figured animal style has become the regular thing, and the filling ornamentation combined with it has assumed the blot-like shapes of the Corinthian and Vurvá stage. Finally the Rhodian style also adopts the new fashion.

Thus this style from an early date shows itself extremely decorative and little inclined to actual representations. We should know nothing of them, if the plates, a favourite item in Rhodian fabrication, like their Phoenician metal prototypes, did not exchange the old concentric decoration of stripes for the division into two segments, the larger of which is occasionally adorned with the human figure instead of the usual animal or fabulous creature. The drawing of the figures adopts the method already familiar. The place of outline drawing of the men is taken by brown tinting,e.g., in the heroes fighting in the well-known scheme on the Euphorbos plate (Fig.57), while the women retain the old technique,e.g.the Gorgon on a plate in London, which is an adaptation of the Oriental animal goddess, and quite

PLATE XXIX.Fig. 58. LATE RHODIAN CAULDRON (LEBES).

PLATE XXIX.

Fig. 58. LATE RHODIAN CAULDRON (LEBES).

exceptionally fills the whole circular space (Fig.59). Both plates show early beginnings of incised work, the Gorgon in the inner marking of the drapery, Hector’s shield in the drawing of the flying bird. The view that the incised technique in figures is borrowed from Protocorinthian work receives support in this shield with its Argive suggestion, and in the Argive lettering, with which the excellent artist, roughly contemporaneous with the Chigi jug (Figs.35and36), has transformed a conventional composition into a scene described in the 17th Book of the Iliad. The full silhouette with inner detail incised appears only in specimens, which from their degenerate filling ornaments are plainly late products of the 7th century,e.g.a plate with a running Perseus. That when this happens the eye retains its oval shape, is characteristic of the Eastern Ionic school.

This transition to the black-figured style can be better followed in a closely allied pottery, fixed by the contemporary inscriptions of dedicators to the Milesian colony of Naukratis in the Delta. While the old filling motives are coming to an end, and the vegetable stripe ornamentation is being increased by the addition of continuous tendrils and confronted lotus and palmette, and rows of circumscribed palmettes, of bands of buds and rows of pomegranates, the animal frieze adopts the incised full silhouette. The human representations, often of a high order of excellence, gradually asserting themselves beside the animal decoration, show a reluctance in taking this step. The old brush technique is still maintained in the specimens, which reserve thin lines in the silhouette instead of incising them (Fig.60); and also the brown tinting of the male body (Fig.61) seems to continue in this area longer than elsewhere. These conservative features are balanced by an innovation in colouring, which like the change in plant ornamentation denotes an important step to the style of the 6th century;even before the actual decay of filling ornamentation, Naukratite painting (as in the Praisos plate, Fig. 29) begins to paint in white the light flesh of women,e.g.the face of the sphinx; and the same colour is used in the Herakles sherd (Fig.61), on which the lion’s skin still appears in the ground of the clay, in order to contrast with the linen jerkin.

The delight in polychrome effect is very strongly expressed on the interiors of the tall drinking cups and other vases, which the Naukratite painter likes to cover with a wash of black, and then to paint over it plant decoration in red and white. Incision enters also into their polychrome lotus decoration and thus gives it an effect similar to that of an older class of kylikes, big-bellied and necked amphorae, found in Rhodes, which is decorated in the old style with incised ornaments of red colour, and at a time when the Rhodian style was still practising pure brush technique, was already preparing for the later phase, a conclusion which must also be drawn from the Paris cauldron for animal representation. This black-ground polychromy, which occurs only occasionally on Rhodian jugs in white and red stripes, white rosettes and eyes (Fig.55), becomes so popular and elaborate at Naukratis, that one is almost tempted to think of a continuation of Protocorinthian influence, since Naukratis was in close connection with Protocorinthian Aegina.

Beside Naukratis itself Aegina was also the chief place of export for this gaily coloured pottery, which unfortunately has only reached us in precious fragments, and of whose scenes of merry life drawn from legend, the revel and the dance we should gladly know more. With the Rhodian ware it also reaches Italy and Sicily; the Acropolis of Athens gives us,e.g.the fine Herakles sherd (Fig.61), and Boeotia in a grave of the early 6th century a late cup with heraldic cocks.

PLATE XXX.Fig. 59. GORGON PLATE FROM RHODES.

PLATE XXX.

Fig. 59. GORGON PLATE FROM RHODES.

Figs. 60 & 61. BUSIRIS; HERAKLES: NAUKRATITE SHERDS FROM NAUKRATIS AND ATHENS.

Beside the Rhodian ware Miletus seems also to have been the export-centre of another allied fabric, that of the vases called ‘Fikellura,’ from the name of the site in Rhodes, where they were first found. Their home is now generally sought in Samos because of the common ware found in that island. The greater number of the vases preserved, the prevalent form being the necked amphorae with metope-maeander (Fig.56), are contemporaneous with the later phase of the Rhodian. This is proved by the advanced ornamentation with the thinner simplified lotus wreath, the rows of circumscribed palmettes, leaves (Fig.63), pomegranates (Fig.62), and crescents (Fig.63); also by the almost complete disappearance of the ‘horror vacui’ so that the painter may reduce filling ornament to its lowest dimensions, paint big surfaces with loose net and scale patterns, and decorate the body of the vase with big continuous handle tendrils and an animal placed between them or only with a human figure boldly inserted in the void (Fig.62). In the animals and fabulous beings, which add to the Rhodian types the heron and the water-hen or the fantastic man with the head of a hare, the partial silhouette is now rare; narrow lines left without colour, as at Naukratis, take the place of incised lines, and in the same technique are the purely human forms, which with their receding foreheads, projecting noses and almond-shaped eyes, with their coarse postures, are, like the Naukratis vases, true offspring of the Ionic spirit.

The Altenburg amphora (Fig.63) must be a late example. The loin-cloths are painted red and framed with incised lines, which this style so long resisted. A few dot rosettes, reduced to their lowest dimensions, are all that is left of the old filling ornamentation, a long-stemmed bud, such as the early 6th century favours, projects into the field. Just asthe runner of the London vase in his vigorous but stiff posture gives quite a new meaning to an old ornamental scheme, so the movements of the Altenburg revellers, which entirely fill the field, convince us of their intoxication. The ornamental style has now in the East, as well as in the West, become narrative and descriptive.

With these bibulous Ionians, who to the sound of flutes dance round their big mixing-bowl with cups and jugs, we pass finally from the wide ramifications of 7th century vase history to the developed archaic style.

PLATE XXXI.Figs. 62 & 63. FIKELLURA AMPHORÆ.

PLATE XXXI.

Figs. 62 & 63. FIKELLURA AMPHORÆ.

ARCHAIC art, the wonderful offspring of the contact of Greek civilization with the East, exercises its charm to-day more than ever. We have ceased to ascribe a unique saving grace to the classic period, the period of full bloom, and to allow no independent value to the preceding century except as an inevitable transitional phase. We love these archaic works of sculpture and painting for their own sake, not in spite of their crudities but just because of their unpolished hidden vigour, because of the precious combination of their essential features. The fetters of space, and the strong tradition of an ornamental early period give them a monumental effect, which has nothing of mummified stiffness but is kept ever fresh and youthful by an eminently progressive spirit and an energetic endeavour to attain freedom. The archaic style ‘with fresh boldness goes beyond its Oriental patterns, is ever making fresh experiments, and thus exhibits constant change and progress. It is always full of serious painstaking zeal, it is always careful, takes honest trouble, is exactly methodical: the language which it speaks always tells of inward cheerfulness and joy at the result of effort, the effect produced by independent exertion. There is something touching in the sight of archaic art with its child-like freshness, its painstaking zeal, its reverence for tradition, and yet its bold progressiveness. What a contrast to Oriental and Egyptian art, which are fast bound in tradition: in the one thesweltering air of dull coercion, in the other the fresh atmosphere of freedom’ (Furtwängler).

The history leading up to the origin of this style has become clear to us by quarrying in different localities. We saw the vases lose their peculiarly carpet-like appearance, the filling motives disappear, the bands of animals and ornaments forfeit their independence and become a subordinate member in the tectonic construction, we saw the world of figures win its way out of ornamental compulsion to greater freedom and extend over the vase. The 6th century, to the beginnings of which we pursued the history of vases, knows only occasionally inserted rosettes, or a lonely bud projecting into the field. Plant ornamentation becomes true Greek ornament, abstract, tectonic, and when occasion demands, full of life with its swing. Animal friezes retire to the foot or the shoulder, are often incidentally treated as mere decorative accessories or seized by quite unheraldic liveliness. The principal interest is devoted to depicting man, his doings and goings on. The vase painter is now more anxious than ever to narrate and depict; he finds ever less satisfaction in ornamental composition. He is never tired of describing hunting and warfare, wrestling and chariot-racing, the festal dance and procession, but with greatest preference, remembering the purpose of his vases, drinking and wild dancing. But also the heroes of past ages, their bold exploits and strange adventures, are his constant theme. The Homeric Epic, the tales of Herakles the mighty, the bold Perseus and Bellerophon, had evoked pictorial representations even in the 7th century; but now the full stream of the legendary treasury pours into painting and gives an infinitely rich material to the joy of narration.

What the vase-painter makes of this material is never conceived in the historical or archæological spirit, butbreathes entirely the air of his own time; often only the added names (which according to the new feeling for space assume smaller dimensions) raise a genre scene into one from myth. Moreover the Saga is only seldom re-shaped by inventive brains. Types once invented pass on, go from workshop to workshop, from one district to another, are abbreviated (p. 49), expanded, conventionally repeated or filled with new life. Types may also cross; there arise purely through art, contaminations of legend, which are foreign to poetry. When a Corinthian painter unites the Embassy to Achilles (Iliad IX) with the visit of Thetis, this has as little to do with poetry, as when on Attic vases the birth of Athena is coupled with the apotheosis of Herakles, or the slaying of Troilos is transferred to Astyanax, or the entombment of the dead Sarpedon to Memnon. But everything strange need not be misunderstanding on the artist’s part. The vases supply us with a multitude of legendary motives and variations, which we cannot find in literature, and are the faithful reflex of the fluidity of Greek mythology, which, devoid of canon and dogmatism, was in constant flux.

Olympos too, is subject to these vicissitudes. Its gods live a human life among men, the only difference being that some representative scenes give them a stiffer and more elaborate appearance than that of ordinary mortals. In early times the divinity is chiefly betokened by inscriptions and attributes. On the painting of the Corinthian Kleanthes stood Poseidon with a fish in his hand beside Zeus in labour. Late observers of this picture failed to understand this external characterization of the sea-god, and saw an act of brotherly sympathy with the god’s pains in this holding up of the tunny; and thus a great deal beside must have appeared strange to them,e.g.Apollo with the great lyre still bearded in the 7th century (Fig.52), Herakles withoutlion-skin (Fig.64), the unarmed Athena, who only at the beginning of the 6th century, in contrast with the Chigi vase (Fig.37), the Aegina bowl and the Gorgon lebes (p. 49), begins to express her bellicose nature by attributes, and much besides.

The favourite god of the drinking vessels is the wine-god with cup and vine. He makes Hephaistos drunk and leads him back to Olympos to liberate Hera from the magic chair. The big-bellied dancers and purely human creatures, who form his escort on Corinthian vases, in the first third of the century are superseded by the Ionic horse-men, the Satyrs, who become ever more closely associated with Dionysos, celebrate feasts with the Maenads, never despise the gifts of their master, and make fair nymphs pay for it. The half-bestial creature in whom ancient Greek fancy vigorously incorporates man’s pleasure in wine and women with all its comic effects, is quite the patron of archaic vase-painting.

That all these representations were developed by vase-painting alone is more than improbable. That the Bacchic scenes of toping and dancing were created on the actual vase, is most likely; but one is often enough compelled to assume other sources. The fight of Herakles with the lion, for instance, in its oldest form is the borrowing of an Oriental type, which is composed for a tall rectangle, and is expanded by the vase-painters for their purposes by filling figures, ‘spectators.’ The gifted artist, who gave this heraldic type the more natural impress which was regular in the older black-figured style, was perhaps a vase-painter; the creator of the later black-figured type was certainly not, for his horizontal group is certainly a fine invention but always has to be adapted artificially to the vase surface. As with the wrestling of Herakles, so it is with Theseus’ struggle with the Minotaur. The same sort of extension occurs on a favourite subject of older black-figured style, the quadriga in front view, whose horses heraldically turn their heads sideways, whose helmeted warrior is in front view while the unhelmeted driver is in profile. This type, certainly invented for a square, is also known in bronze and stone relief, and the question, in what technique it first appeared, will scarcely be answered in favour of vase-painting. For a square, too, the finely compact group of Herakles wrestling with Triton was first composed, a theme common on Attic vases from the hydria of Timagoras onwards; the older wrestling scheme, superseded by this type, in its Herakles spread out before the eyes of the observer and kneeling as he wrestles, still shows strong affinity with the Orientalizing frieze compositions (p. 46), and is for vase decoration much more typical than the later invention, which on vases always has a ‘borrowed’ effect. The dependence of vase-painting on other techniques is finally evidenced by the so-called ‘couplings’: the best-known instance is the combination of the departure of Amphiaraos with the Funeral-games of Pelias on a Corinthian (Fig.66), an Attic and an Ionic vase, a combination which is borrowed from an inlaid wooden chest of Corinthian workmanship at Olympia (‘the chest of Kypselos’) or a prototype from which both were derived.

After all this one will not hesitate to look for a strong reflex of the great art of painting on the vases, alongside of the special property of the vase-painter and typical ornamental figures equally common to all art, or to picture to oneself wall-paintings or easel pictures, like the birth of Athena by Kleanthes, after the fashion of the best vase-paintings, which are least constrained by ornamental considerations, or to reconstruct from the copies of vase-painters compositions like the Destruction of Troy (Iliupersis), the Return of Hephaistos, the Reception of Herakles into Olympos. One is particularly impelled thisway, when the vases give now shorter, now longer, extracts from the same large composition; thus we have a reflection on some dozen vases of Exekias and his successors of the fine representation of the heroes Aias and Achilles surprised by the Trojans while deeply absorbed in a game of draughts, and warned by Athena just in time (Fig.96). One cannot conceive of any difference of principle in perspective, in the rendering of the body and the drapery, in the spiritual content, between vase-painting and free painting; they both are children of one time. Nor did the vase-painter feel any necessity to alter the composition of his patterns. Only as he had to decorate framed bands, the law of isocephalism was more binding for him than for the great art. Hence his strong disinclination for “landscape,” which we often meet with in Corinthian and Ionian pinakes and wall-painting, but on the vases never, or only in palpable caricature; the painter who on a hydria from Caere copied a seascape with the Rape of Europa, was obliged to place beside the figure what looks like a mole-hill but is intended for a mountain.

This limitation of the possibilities of composition by decorative considerations was of hardly any importance. The wide gulf between free painting and vase picture was conditioned in the first instance by technique. It was that which gave its special effect to the black-figured style and set its stamp upon it. We saw previously that vase-painting, when it took over the silhouette style from the decorative animal frieze, increased its distance from free painting, under whose spell it had been for a good part of the 7th century, that with the incised technique it took over,e.g.the circular drawing of the eye, and with the new colouring entered decorative paths (pp.38,44,49). Free painting drew with the brush on light ground, used black and white very sparingly, more frequently red, blue, green, yellowand brown; placed these colours side by side in simple harmonies, with very little gradation and shading, but also sometimes,e.g.to represent fire, used the smooth brush; rendered the men in reddish brown, women, children, animals and objects in light colouring. With this free-coloured effect the black-figured style was neither able nor anxious to compete. Just like the Geometric, it is in its own fashion again an ornamental style, which does not disown its predominantly decorative character. The figure silhouettes serve it as ornaments to fill a given space, which are in a certain equipoise of colour in relation to the rest of the decoration and the black painted parts of the vase; the incision stipulates a sharp delineation of types, the imposed colour gives a parti-coloured effect. The coloured effect of the vases is essentially defined by the clay, which now, in the developed black-figured style, takes on a brilliant warm red upper surface, and by the black glaze, which assumes a metallic lustre. The darker colouring of the clay deprives the lighter parts of their effects by contrast, and compels the painters to replace the contour-drawing of women, linen garments, etc., gradually by laying on white colour, with which at first the contour is simply filled; but afterwards more commonly black underpainting is overlaid. With the transition to white, clear silhouettes are also obtained, which set off against the background more effectively than the old contour figures.

The advance in the preparation of the clay and glaze colour came about on the Greek mainland. Tradition makes the Sicyonian Butades invent the red colouring of the clay at Corinth, and thus gives the correct indication. The Chalcidian and Attic workshops helped the new technique to prevail; in the East it gradually gets the upper hand and forces the Ionian manufactories to give up their favourite white ground and adapt their technical freedom to thegrowing strictness of the western system. Attica, which in the 6th century opens a dangerous rivalry in Eastern and Western markets and finally wins the day, brings the process to perfection. With the refinement of incised technique it puts an end to the parti-coloured method still much affected by Corinthians and Chalkidians, it clears away the big surfaces coloured red and white and all colour in ornament and animal frieze, and helps the harmony of clay and black to its purest and fullest effect.

With the disappearance of the old parti-coloured system the vases are completely removed from the effect of free painting. For that we may be grateful to fortune. For this refinement of the black-figured style permitted the sensitive feeling of Greek artists for decoration to satisfy the delight of narrating and describing along with the ornamental traditions of the old style. They had no need, as had the old Minoan vase-painters (p. 10), to shrink from borrowing figured scenes. The recasting of types into the decorative silhouette style made it possible for them to conjure on to the vases whatever touched their hearts and delighted their eyes, and thus to transmit to us an infinite variety of scenes, without which our knowledge of Greek legend, Greek life and Greek art would have remained terribly scanty.

Corinth must lead off the history of this new style. The chief centre of commerce and industry in the Peloponnese, the celebrated seat of a flourishing ceramic industry and of an important school of painting, it not only took the decisive step to the new technique, but even in its red-clay phase had helped the designs to drive out animal decoration, and composed, or at least introduced into vase-painting, numerous types, which supply material to other workshops for a long time. The quadriga in front view, which Chalcidian and Attic painters repeated so often and which kept

PLATE XXXII.Fig. 64. HERAKLES AND EURYTIOS; HORSEMEN: FROM A CORINTHIAN KRATER.

PLATE XXXII.

Fig. 64. HERAKLES AND EURYTIOS; HORSEMEN: FROM A CORINTHIAN KRATER.

Fig. 65. CORINTHIAN KRATER.

its decorative effect for almost a century, appears here for the first time; the triangular scheme of two wrestlers seizing each other by the arms and pressing head against head, which survived to the time of Nikosthenes, was taken by the Amphiaraos krater (Fig.66) from the above-mentioned chest of Kypselos (p. 67); the nuptial procession of Peleus and Thetis which we shall meet on the lebes of Sophilos and the François-vase is prepared for in Corinthian vase-painting; and the battle-scenes, rider-friezes and chariot-races, of which there was a beginning in the Protocorinthian style, were most richly developed by the Corinthians, and adopted by Chalkis and Athens often without any essential improvement. Thus one may be sure, that a number of other types, which are not represented in the selection that accident has given us, started their victorious career from Corinth, and that the lost great art of Corinth, the bronze industry of which we have specimens and the richly-adorned chest of Kypselos described by Pausanias supplied to the vase-painters a number of mythological compositions, which influenced other manufactories. Unfortunately the greater part of this rich treasure is lost to us. The loss is the more to be lamented, as what we have shows us a fine inventive talent on the part of the Corinthian artists and a magnificently free and easy conception of life and legend. The Homeric poetry and the Epic inspired by it, the lays of Peleus and Herakles, the ballad poetry now becoming very fashionable, from which comee.g.the birth of Athena and probably also the Return of Hephaistos to Olympos, are reflected on these Corinthian vases in inimitably vivid and drastic fashion; and the vase-painter also gives scenes from daily life, carouses, drunken men who dance wildly with naked women, kitchen and winepress, riding and driving, marching out to battle, and the wild mellay itself. It is particularly on the kraters (Figs.64-66) that we can trace how the accumulating material gets space on the vases; animal decoration, in which heraldic cocks are very popular, retires ever more to the reverse, under the handles, into the base stripe, and also by preference is replaced by lines of galloping riders, who form a lively decorative foil to the mythological principal picture (Fig.64). Meanwhile filling ornament disappears. The flying bird over the rider (Fig.65) renders the same service as the rosette, nay a better; it transplants the scene out of a decorative space into an actual one, the open country; and the space-filling animals of the Amphiaraos vase, which are traditional (p.40), are not intended merely any longer to enliven the vase surface but the wall of the house, the floor and the air. Thus the liberation of the field, for which Timonidas and his fellows paved the way, is attained. With this goes hand in hand the liberation of figure-drawing from ornamental constraint. The outspreading of the figure in the surface, which is still strong in the 7th century, is toned down or ingeniously given a motive, as with the kneeling warrior who fights backwards, and does not disguise his connection with the old runner with bent knee. The individualizing of men and animals carried forward by Timonidas now once more makes big advances in human figures, horses and dogs.

We will select two of the kraters to give us an idea of the development of the style. One, a Paris vase (Fig.64), gives a special application to a fine banqueting scene, by added names and the insertion of Iole, as the visit paid by Herakles to Eurytios, king of Oichalia. The fair daughter of the house stands with some indifference between the guest and her brother; it is supposed to represent a legend, but is really little more than a genre scene, as which it is hard to beat. The lively conversation of the guests, the dogs tied to the sofa-legs waiting and speculating on the chance of

PLATE XXXIII.Fig. 66. DEPARTURE OF AMPHIARAOS: FROM A CORINTHIAN KRATER.

PLATE XXXIII.

Fig. 66. DEPARTURE OF AMPHIARAOS: FROM A CORINTHIAN KRATER.

bits falling from the table are masterly, and even the horses in the supporting frieze, if out of proportion and inelegant, are the more characteristic and living. The technique follows old tradition; the flesh of Iole, tables and sofas, one dog, shields on the reverse, appear in outline drawing. Such contours, also found sometimes where men’s bodies left white set off those painted dark, unite to some extent, as does the red colouring of the male countenance, the vase in its effect with the great art.

On the other hand the Amphiaraos krater (Fig.66), which gives up red for male faces, and makes a point of covering the outline figures with a layer of white, has become more decorative and black-figured. Its pictures are not equal in execution to the invention, but come from excellent models (p. 67). Between the colonnade and façade of the house, which are in line like the tables in the Eurytios vase, the hero, because of his oath, mounts his chariot to go with open eyes to the death he forebodes; his angry look is directed to Eriphyle and the fatal necklace in her hand. With raised hands the family takes leave, a maid-servant gives the stirrup-cup to the charioteer. Foreboding evil, the faithful Halimedes sits on the ground: his heart has evidently bidden him to train up the boy Alkmaion to take vengeance on his mother. The whole delight in narration, which in the exaggerated rendering of the necklace strongly emphasizes the previous history, is as genuinely archaic, as the mythological individualizing of an old type ‘The warrior’s departure.’

The Amphiaraos krater is more developed than the Eurytios vase, not merely in technique. The painter of the later vase, though not so gifted as his colleague, draws more cleverly, and works with a set of types before him, as the frieze of riders shows. The advance becomes plain in the shape of the vase. The Eurytios krater encloses an almostuniformly swelling cauldron between a lip ring which is very low and a foot which spreads out in ample dimensions. From this round-bellied archaic shape we pass to a later more defined and elegant one in the Amphiaraos krater, which has a higher neck, a steeper and much less swelling body, with its lower part running to a point, till finally the outline almost resembles an inverted triangle and from the handles a rectangular or curved bridge has to be built leading to the high rim (krater à colonnette). The tendency to development, which we can read out of the vase shapes, may be taken as a symbol of the history of style. For a Greek vase was always something organic, as much so as a tree or animal.

Unfortunately, besides the large kraters with their numerous figures, which were favourite articles of export, few vases are preserved. In the scene on the Eurytios krater we get the lebes with stand, also the jug and drinking cup (kylix), which exist in various extant specimens. The kylix has an offset lip (as in Fig. 24), and often knobs on the handles, the interior picture is framed by tongue pattern. Beside the necked amphorae, which like the kraters seldom have any other ornament than rays, shoulder tongues and neck rosettes, the similarly decorated big-bellied amphorae continue, which like their Attic parallels (p. 51) put human busts or animal representations of old and new style into the figure panel. The three-handled water pitcher (hydria) has the type with vaulted shoulder common in the older black-figured style, and adorns it with spirals and maeanders. All these ornaments, to which may be added the double lotus and palmette of the Eurytios krater and occasional net and step patterns, partake of the solidity and variety of the style.

Strangely enough, the phase of the Corinthian style here described is for us the end of the fabric; not one of these

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