CHAPTER V.THE RED-FIGURED STYLE IN THE ARCHAIC PERIOD

PLATE XLVII.Fig. 86. WEDDING OF PELEUS: FRAGMENTS OF A CAULDRON BY SOPHILOS.

PLATE XLVII.

Fig. 86. WEDDING OF PELEUS: FRAGMENTS OF A CAULDRON BY SOPHILOS.

Fig. 87. ATTIC TRIPOD-VASE.

are reflected in the Attic pottery. These reflections give a very varied air to Attic pottery, but on the other hand help to a dating of its separate phases. After a period of Corinthian influence follows one with a strong Chalkidian element, in the eye-kylikes the pattern of ‘Phineus’ ware is at work, while relations to East Ionic art run along side by side.

The group, which one is inclined to make parallel with the red-clay Corinthian, may be named the ‘Sophilos’ group from the fragments of a ‘lebes’ found on the Acropolis (Fig.86). In contrast with its immediate predecessor the Sophilos vase vies in motley effect with Corinthian ware. Ornament is richly painted; himatia and borders are picked out in colour, women and linen chitons have a white filling; in the red of the male face and the varied colouring of the horses the system of contrasted colours is as plainly exhibited as in the red colouring of the male breast or of the whole male body on other contemporary vases. The marriage of Peleus and Thetis is the subject, in a type repeated on the François vase (Fig.90), which we see developed on Corinthian kraters, probably under the influence of the chest of Kypselos. Who introduced into the scene the Muse in front view playing on the syrinx, cannot be stated; the lower part of the body in profile is in marked contrast with this bold front view; that it is of ornamental origin, perhaps from a double Siren, might be suggested without its being too venturesome.

The frieze is framed between a broad lotus and palmette pattern and a stripe with large animals. Whether the filling ornament has been omitted from the animal as well as from the figured frieze, in which nothing but the big lettering reminds us of the old requirement of filling the space, cannot be ascertained from this specimen; a second vase of the same painter shows between the animals, which still suggest the Vurvá style, isolated large rosettes, and other vases ofthis group make a palmette flower or bud with stalk project into the field. These isolated echoes of the old filling ornamentation, influenced by the East like the gradually appearing friezes of buds and leaves (p. 83) disappear about the middle of the century; but the animal friezes themselves live on longer.

This survival of old decorative tendencies in a new shape appears still more plainly in other vases of the “Sophilos” period. The amphorae, which leave a “metope” unpainted to carry their figures or make the figure field continuous, when they do not cover the whole body with stripes, have like the Klazomenian on the neck a head, a lotus and palmette cross, or a circle between zig-zags (the amphora which Dionysos is dragging on the François vase is of this type), and prefer still to decorate their stripes and fields with heraldically arranged animals. The Ionic liberties too, the meaningless compositions, are not infrequent, just as beside many Corinthian echoes in the friezes of animals and riders, Ionic patterns often assert themselves in the drawing and colouring of the animals, and in the shape and decoration of the vases. The kraters and hydriae which are parallel with the Corinthian, give the same impression. Of the smaller vases we may select two hasty compositions, which cannot compare with the fine work of Sophilos, but in their way help to enlarge our idea of the period. The Munich tripod-vase (Fig.87) in the stripe on the rim shows alongside of the old animal composition two wrestlers of the Corinthian scheme and a horse race from the same source, the succession of which is interrupted by a fallen horse just as the animal friezes of contemporary vases contain fighting animal groups; and a kantharos of Boeotian manufacture and shape (Fig.88) over the animal frieze introduces the wild dancers, who as at Corinth, Chalkis and in East Ionia prepare the way for the Satyrs.

PLATE XLVIII.Fig. 88. BŒOTIAN KANTHAROS.

PLATE XLVIII.

Fig. 88. BŒOTIAN KANTHAROS.

Fig. 89. ARRIVAL OF THESEUS’ SHIP AT DELOS: DETAIL OF THE FRANÇOIS VASE, FIG. 90.From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

Fig. 89. ARRIVAL OF THESEUS’ SHIP AT DELOS: DETAIL OF THE FRANÇOIS VASE, FIG. 90.

From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

Just as we followed the process in late Corinthian and Chalkidian workmanship, so in Athens the broad, massive archaic black-figured style in the shape of the vase and the rendering of the figures passes into more and more elegant compression and precision; Sophilos is followed by Klitias. The Florence vase ‘made’ by the potter Ergotimos, ‘painted’ by Klitias and named after its finder François (Figs.89and90), even in the boldly rising outline of the body shows the spirit of a new age, and goes beyond the round-bellied shape of the Gorgon ‘lebes’ as much as the late Corinthian kraters surpass the Eurytios vase (Fig.64). Ergotimos holds the mean between the old round-bellied vase shapes and the more elegant ones of the Chalkidian best period (p. 77), just as Klitias does between the figured style of Sophilos and that of Amasis (p. 105); and as Ergotimos does his best in delicately moulding the shape and gives the vase a showy appearance with his elongated handle volutes, so in the figured decoration covering the whole surface and in the incredibly delicate execution of all details Klitias presents a refinement of the black-figured style which in its way cannot be surpassed. Potter and painter here take a step, which secures for Attic pottery the paramount position for all time.

The treatment of the procession of the Olympians in honour of the newly-wedded sea-goddess on the principal frieze is particularly rich. We have seen that Klitias here utilized an old type. The representative solemnity required by the subject gives an archaic stamp to this frieze; in particular the richly adorned festal clothes with patterns that it almost requires a microscope to see, which bear witness to uncanny patience and accuracy on the part of the painter, heighten the stiffly venerable impression. But when compared with Sophilos, Klitias shows a considerable advance in the rendering of nature.

For that we must not lay stress on the head of Dionysos in front view, for the god’s mask-like appearance passed from cult into vase-painting; but we may point to the diminished heaviness of the figures, the smaller size of the eye, the division of the himatia into stripes, which here and there converge like folds, and the reduction in size of the inscriptions. The other friezes exhibit Klitias as a master of the delineation of life and movement: the arrival of the ship of Theseus at Delos (Fig.89), the hunt of Meleager, the battle with the Centaurs, the chariot-race, the return of Hephaistos, the adventure of Troilos, and the delightful frieze on the foot with the battle of dwarfs and cranes; even the heraldic animal frieze is seized by the same liveliness, for between the heraldic sphinxes and griffins the animals, now treated in quite an elegant and concise way, are attacking each other. How much of these scenes is due to the inventiveness of Klitias and his direct observation of nature cannot be made out. He has not got the rough freshness and naturalism of the Ionic painters, but instead a marked feeling for clear and speaking types; and generally speaking, discipline and the gift of abstraction seem to have been more characteristic of the Athenians than of the Ionians, who set more carelessly to work. Perhaps Klitias got from eastern masters the interruption of the heraldry in the animal frieze by fighting groups; and at any rate the Satyrs who accompany the drunken Hephaistos come from the East into Attic pottery.

In the technique of the figures, the old style is worthily putting forth its last efforts; the white is still put direct on the clay, the man’s face is coloured red, black horse alternates with white. But with the perfection of the clay and the black used in painting, and the minute detail of incised lines, a new feeling for colour is brought in, which leads away from the old motley effect; the masters of the

PLATE XLIX.Fig. 90.KRATER BY KLITIAS AND ERGOTIMOS: “THE FRANÇOIS VASE.”From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

PLATE XLIX.

Fig. 90.

KRATER BY KLITIAS AND ERGOTIMOS: “THE FRANÇOIS VASE.”

From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

François vase themselves in their later works go over to the new system, which paints a ground for the white and gives up red in the male body, a system which, perhaps, other less thorough artists had already set going.

The chariot-race for a prize on the neck of the François vase introduces us to an old and popular contest, which according to tradition Pisistratus replaced by other games, when in 566 B.C. he reformed the Panathenaea. At the same time he must have erected a new image of Athena on the Acropolis, which, in opposition to the old conception, (p. 66) still followed by the François vase, represented the goddess in full armour. For on the prize vases, which were given to the victors full of precious oil and labelled ‘one of the prizes from the city of Athens’ (τῶν Άθήνηθεν ἄθλων), Athena always appears as a fighting warrior, just as the poet Stesichoros and paintings of the time of Sophilos had made her leap from the head of Zeus. The oldest of these Panathenaic amphorae (an idea of their shape is given by Fig. 101, a later specimen of about 520 B.C.) shows on the obverse the new type of Athena in the making, and on the reverse the chariot-race which was now becoming infrequent. Since this vase adheres closely to the Sophilos group in style and especially in the animal decoration of the neck, but on the other hand already has a painted ground for white, it will not be possible to move the François vase and the transition to the later technique away from the sixties of the 6th century.

The group of kraters, lebetes, hydriae, amphorae and other vases, which immediately adheres to the François vase, usually, in so far as it is not interrupted by marked individualities, is described by the antiquated name ‘Tyrrhenian,’ derived from the finds in Etruria. The conservative and often mechanical character of these vases does not conceal the progressive elements. The vases assume themore slender egg-shaped form known to us from Chalkis, the old neck ornament of the amphorae (p. 96) is replaced by lotus and palmette. White colour is regularly placed on black ground; Herakles is often equipped with the lion’s skin; Athena with at any rate helmet and spear; in place of the old-fashioned burlesque dancers and naked women come Satyrs and Maenads. But of improvements in observation of nature this second-class group has hardly any to show. It lives on the achievements of great masters, on Corinthian traditions, and eastern influences. The frieze amphorae, which continue alongside of the amphorae with picture field, vie with the François vase in the accumulation of figured friezes; only in the lower stripe they economize in figure scenes by using lines of lotus and palmettes and animals. Thus their general appearance is still very like the Vurvá vases, the Gorgon lebes and many vases of the Sophilos period. The traditions of the 7th century end in this mechanical group; the great masters of the second third of the century bring, perhaps from Chalkis, new vase types and new kinds of decoration.

The transition may first be followed in the Kylix, which happily can be traced in its development by many signed specimens. The firm of Ergotimos produces a cup with knobbed handles and no set-off for the rim, the interior picture of which is framed by tongue pattern, thus a kylix of the type known to us from Corinth and Chalkis; on the outside the Satyr is still loosely connected with drinkers of the old type, and has thus not yet been associated with Dionysos and the Maenads. This type of kylix shews marked Chalkidian influence, especially in later specimens like that of Boston (Fig.92), on which Circe (painted white over black) hands to the companions of Odysseus the fatal potion and so brings about her own abrupt end. Series of branches and buds, probably also the dog in front view (p. 81)

PLATE L.Fig. 91. ‘LITTLE MASTER’ KYLIX.

PLATE L.

Fig. 91. ‘LITTLE MASTER’ KYLIX.

Fig. 92. ATTIC KYLIX WITH KNOB-HANDLES.

and much in the style of the figures come from the neighbouring fabric. This Chalkidian influence is to be traced on a second type of kylix belonging to this period, that with off-set rim, (not the one in Circe’s hand), which for a time carelessly draws its figures over the junction, but finally makes a clean cut between handle frieze and rim ornament: the rim ise.g.decorated with a branch or painted black, the handle frieze bears figures or the artist’s signature in neat letters between the palmettes proceeding from the handles. The masters of the François vase themselves took this step forward; in Naukratis and the interior of Asia Minor signed specimens have been found, speaking documents of the popularity of the fine Attic ware in the East, which help to explain the alteration of the Ionic style (p. 86).

The workshop of Ergotimos passed to his son Eucheiros (B.M. Cat. ii., p. 221), who, like the sons of Nearchos, Ergoteles and Tleson (B.M. Cat. ii., p. 222) is found among the so-called ‘little masters,’ the makers of dedicated high-stemmed cups, who, with special pride, and probably also for decorative reasons, put their names on their products. More than twenty makers’ names, among them those of Exekias, Pamphaios, Charitaios, Hischylos, and Nikosthenes, have been handed down to us on these vases, an important piece of evidence for the vigour of Attic production in the generation after Klitias and Ergotimos. These masters preserve the division between handle and rim stripes, even when the rim is not marked off from the body. As with Klitias, the handle stripe bears the master’s inscription or a drinking motto; in this case the representation, consisting of neat miniature figures or a female head drawn in fine outline, moves into the upper stripe (Fig.91). Side by side with that, the painting of the rim black and decoration of the handle stripe with figures are very common. In the figures decorative tendencies, betokening intentionrather than convention, assert themselves. The interior picture often consists of the Gorgon’s mask, or a figure to fill the space to fit the circle; the outside often bears meaningless compositions (heraldic animals, winged creatures, runners, riders, men wrapped in cloaks), out of which develop scenes of hunting and pursuit, chariot-races, and cock-fights; but also mythological scenes and vigorous battle pictures with many figures occur. When such scenes are still flanked by heraldic animals, in this case primitive traditions are consciously retained.

On the Munich kylix (Fig.91) the painter in the inscription praises the beauty of Kalistanthe. More commonly fair boys are praised, a practice which continues on vases for a century, the explanation being supplied by the erotic scenes represented from the later time of Klitias. Those celebrated are seldom to be regarded as the favourites of the vase-painters themselves, but generally sons of the best society, for whom there was a furore. This worship of beauty is of use to the historian, for many of theKaloiare great persons with established dates, and anyhow the common love-name puts all vases which bear it into a short period of time; for the bloom of beauty lasts not more than a decade.

If the kylikes of the ‘little masters’ last to the beginning of the red-figured style (p. 109), the eye-cups go a good bit beyond this limit. The type must have been brought to Athens from the ‘Phineus’ manufactory (p. 80) in the later period of the ‘little masters’; and perhaps the Ionian Amasis, who has left a fine specimen with a figure holding a branch between the eyes, had much to do with this naturalization. Certainly the Attic artists never rival the swelling shapes and vigorous life of their prototypes. With this type the outside begins again to be treated as a decorative unit

PLATE LI.Fig. 93. DIONYSOS: INTERIOR OF AN EYE KYLIX BY EXEKIAS.

PLATE LI.

Fig. 93. DIONYSOS: INTERIOR OF AN EYE KYLIX BY EXEKIAS.

without division, an arrangement of which the red-figured style makes almost exclusive use. The interior is generally not more richly decorated than by the ‘little masters.’ When Exekias on one vase adorns the whole interior surface with a wonderful idyll, the giver of the vine in a sailing boat with dolphins leaping round him, this is quite an exception (Fig.93): that the ground is painted brick-red, is quite unique.

The names Ergotimos and Klitias, Exekias and Amasis, Charitaios, Pamphaios and Nikosthenes show that the manufacture of kylikes was by no means a separate speciality, and that it may be simply due to accident if certain firms producing larger vases do not recur among the ‘little masters.’

The larger masterpieces naturally show the progress of the style much more plainly than the conservative Tyrrhenian ware and the kylikes. We noticed above, that single specimens, which stand out markedly from the ordinary ware of the period, attach themselves to the François vase. The master of a fine lebes from the Acropolis showing Ionic influence, who occasionally still colours the male face red, probably emigrated from the East like his contemporaries Kolchos and Lydos. Like Klitias, the masters prefer to cover garments with rich patterns rather than to render folds: they relieve the monotony of white chitons by vertical strokes, and divide the surfaces of cloaks into stripes. This division does not yet attain any effect of depth. But when Nearchos, the father of two ‘little masters’ (pp.101and112), divides the short male chiton also by wavy lines into black and red stripes, he has already in his mind the rendering of folds, and Kolchos grades the ends of cloaks with clear folds. This emancipation from the old superficiality, which in the period of the ‘little masters’ leads to the emergence of the ‘fold’ style in theworks of Amasis and Exekias, must now be exhibited in a selection of amphorae and hydriae in connection with the change of vase-shapes and decoration.

We begin with the big-bellied amphora, which at the end of the 7th century we saw reserve a square field and decorate it with horses’ or women’s heads, and which in the period of Sophilos begins to put an upper border of ornament on its figure-field, which is often adorned with animals. Fine specimens of the Klitias period, which banish the animal ornament into a lower frieze or give it up altogether, show an obvious change in shape, in that the handles, instead of standing off like ears, are drawn up perpendicularly, while the body of the vase is to some degree tightened. Vases like that of Taleides with the slaying of the Minotaur, or like the unsigned Iliupersis vase in Berlin (Fig.94) with the gay alternate palmette pattern and the old heavy foot of the François vase, belong to this class. On both vases standing figures form an extension of an animated central group, but the Iliupersis master makes a better whole of his triptych than Taleides, who merely juxtaposes the heroes’ conflict and the spectators: alongside of the furious Neoptolemos, who has already laid one Trojan low and is on the point of despatching the aged king and his grandson with one blow, Menelaos threatens his faithless wife, whom he has won back, while on the other side Priam’s entreaties are supported by wife and daughter: a picture rich in content, of true archaic vividness and talkativeness, excellently drawn and composed. It is not only the way in which white is used that takes one beyond the François vase; the rosette ornamentation of the garments is quite typical of the following period (Fig.92); the wavy striping of the short chiton and the simple grading of the cloak reminds us of Nearchos and Kolchos, and whether Klitias could have characterized a dying man as well as our master is at least

PLATE LII.Fig. 94. ILIUPERSIS: FROM AN ATTIC AMPHORA.

PLATE LII.

Fig. 94. ILIUPERSIS: FROM AN ATTIC AMPHORA.

PLATE LIII.Fig. 95. SATYRS AT THE WINE-PRESS: FROM AN ATTIC AMPHORA.

PLATE LIII.

Fig. 95. SATYRS AT THE WINE-PRESS: FROM AN ATTIC AMPHORA.

questionable.

The current of Chalkidian influence, which sets in vigorously about this time, seizes also the body amphora. The arched foot becomes more plate-like, a clay-ring unites it with the end of the body, which is more taper; the Chalkidian wreath of buds (Fig.71) for a time commonly takes the place of the palmette and lotus band, which becomes scantier and more monotonous, and as at Chalkis, a figure frieze (Fig.95) may occupy this space. The type belongs to the earlier ‘little master’ period. From Exekias, who was himself in his off-hours a ‘little master,’ comes a specimen in the Louvre with the praise of the fair Stesias, a youthful work of this worthy successor of Klitias, on which Chalkidian patterns are very finely worked out, without the slightest attempt at the rendering of folds.

The unsigned Würzburg amphora of Amasis (Fig.95), like all the vases of this master peculiar in shape and of perfect technique, is more progressive and probably somewhat later than the Stesias amphora of Exekias: the cloak of Dionysos on the obverse is laid in three folds; on the reverse the shaggy satyrs, stylized in a quite un-Attic way, who to the sound of the flute are gathering, pressing, and distributing into jars the beloved gift of the god, show the same connection with the ‘Phineus’ factory as the eye kylix (p. 102). The technical perfection and the fine decorative effect of Amasis’ vases are only surpassed by a wonderful contemporary group, which is usually called the ‘affected’ class, because it consciously sacrifices the living representation of the figure world to the ornamental general effect.

The over-elegant works of Exekias, the ‘affected’ vases, the minute ‘little master’ kylikes represent the last refinement of the silhouette style, its last trump-card. The future belonged not to the masters of the adorned surface,but to the delineators of the surface in movement. In the last phase of the body amphora prior to the red-figured style, in which the band-like handles and the narrower neck are drawn higher and the stiff palmette pattern becomes canonical, Exekias in his riper development passes over to rich rendering of folds; on the harmonious amphora in Rome, which no longer praises Stesias but Onetorides (Fig.96) he exhibits in the cloaks of the players the last possibilities of his subtle technique with an almost incredible devotion to detail, but even these fine clothes have their edges overlapping, and on the reverse of the vase, besides foldless patterned clothes, appear cloaks richly animated with folds. The amphora must be of the same period as the eye kylix (Fig.93); not only the feeling as a whole but the dark-red chitons in layers on the outside point to the late activity of the master.

The necked amphorae complete our idea of the two great masters. The old heavy shapes with the arched foot take up Chalkidian influences and go through the same processes of change, which we know from Chalkis. The old-fashioned decoration with animal stripes is retained by the Tyrrhenian vases, that with continuous pictorial field by the ‘affected’ group for a time, till the later Chalkidian type conquers the whole field (Fig.69). Amasis seems not merely to have introduced it into Athens but also to have created the pretty variation with the flat shoulder with a rectangular turn and the wide handles running out below into tendrils: for these continuous tendrils are old property of his eastern home. The handle ornament separates off the pictures on the two sides and liberates the figures from the constraints of a frieze. The Paris amphora with Dionysos and the interesting group of embracing Maenads (Fig.98) is closely connected with the Würzburg amphora (Fig.95) not only by the double rays, which Amasis loves,

PLATE LIV.Fig. 96. ACHILLES AND AIAS PLAYING AT DRAUGHTS: FROM AN AMPHORA BY EXEKIAS.

PLATE LIV.

Fig. 96. ACHILLES AND AIAS PLAYING AT DRAUGHTS: FROM AN AMPHORA BY EXEKIAS.

Fig. 97. ATTIC NECKED AMPHORA WITH SATYR-MASK.

PLATE LV.Fig. 98.

PLATE LV.

Fig. 98.

NECKED AMPHORA WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER AMASIS.Fig. 99. DETAIL FROM THE INTERIOR OF A CAULDRON BY EXEKIAS.

NECKED AMPHORA WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER AMASIS.

Fig. 99. DETAIL FROM THE INTERIOR OF A CAULDRON BY EXEKIAS.

by the grouping, which in the other vase is transferred without change to satyrs, by the beginning of himation folds, but also by many details of the very individual style. The aversion to white colour is interesting. On both vases the linen chiton of the god is left black; the Paris maenads are rendered in outline only: it is but seldom that the reaction against the old parti-coloured scheme goes so far. Parallels are provided by the Athena of Kolchos’ jug and the girl-busts of the ‘little masters’ (Fig.91). Both the other amphorae of Amasis are more advanced. The shape of the vase is slimmer, the decoration simpler, the relation of figures to space freer. The bodies are no longer the thick-set broad-thighed type of the older style: the eye plays no longer so prominent a part. The short chiton is not merely laid in black and red layers but even provided with a quite naturally waving border: the artist thus far surpasses the standard of Exekias and even of early red-figured masters. He need not on that account be put very late, for the simple Ionic masters of the Caeretan hydriae, perhaps his countrymen, made this border before him. This Ionism is in favour of Amasis, who signs only as potter, having himself painted all his vases, and having played the pioneer not only in vase shapes and decoration but also in figure style. Exekias (in whose works the unity of the whole is often expressly emphasized by the inscription ‘made and painted me’) does not attack the problem of folds so boldly. Even on the two fine necked amphorae, which praise the favourite of his later period, as a good Athenian he lays the drapery in neatly-ironed layers.

The slender Munich necked amphora (Fig.97) goes still further beyond the Chalkidian models (Fig.69). The neck ornament connects it with the late works of Exekias, the eye decoration with the kylix type of the same time, and eventhe space-filling vine-tendrils, which perhaps Amasis introduced from the ‘Phineus’ factory into Attic painting, are a favourite motive in later times. The satyr mask, like the Dionysos mask, probably passed from cult into decorative painting; if Klitias represents Dionysos, and Amasis the satyr, with head in front view, the influence of these masks is not to be mistaken.

We have not yet named the most productive amphora painter. Nikosthenes supplied some fine examples of the method of Amasis, some of which like the Exekias lebes (Fig.99) on the body of the vase help the fine black colour to exclusive possession; besides a quantity of notably metallic amphorae with band handles, the production of which in quantities seems to be his speciality, though other masters adopted and modified the shape (Fig.104). The often very hasty and conservative decoration of these vases cannot come from one painter. Nikosthenes, of whom almost a hundred signed vases are extant (kraters, ‘Amasis’ and ‘Nikosthenes’ amphorae, ‘little master’ kylikes, eye kylikes, neatly painted jugs with white ground, and red-figured vases) must have employed a series of painters. The only one who gives his name, Epiktetos, we shall hear of later.

The hydria too, which often shows its use in pretty fountain scenes (Fig.106), alters its form. As in Chalkis (p. 76) the egg-shaped type of the Klitias period, showne.g.on the Troilos frieze of the François vase, gradually gives way to the later type with picture field and horizontal, separately adorned shoulder. Timagoras, a contemporary of Exekias, still prefers a broad-bellied shape and does not form handle and foot as elegantly as Pamphaios. His Paris vase with the later type of the contest with Triton (p. 67), on which he still paints the monster’s face red for colour contrast, is very important for chronology by a declaration of love for

PLATE LVI.Fig. 100. FROM A LATE ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED HYDRIA.

PLATE LVI.

Fig. 100. FROM A LATE ATTIC BLACK-FIGURED HYDRIA.

Andokides, a young colleague and later chief master of the early red-figured style. If Timagoras is the predecessor of Andokides, Pamphaios is his rival. His slim London hydria with the slightly bent up handles, on which the vine of Dionysos overgrows the whole picture, and the dark-red striping of the cloak assumes pure fold-character, falls into the red-figured period, which after the second third of the century begins to compete with the old technique, and to which Pamphaios himself opens his workshop. The new style did not abruptly drive out the old: from the time of its predominance perhaps more black-figured vases are preserved than from the preceding period. In the leading studios for a time both techniques were practised side by side, often by the same painters. The balance inclined quickly to the side of the style which painted the background and not the figure, and after the transitional time of Andokides and Pamphaios only inferior talents experiment in the old silhouette style. But though driven out of the leading position, this old style was still busy and productive at least to the beginning of the 5th century: especially necked amphorae and hydriae, which the new style did not zealously affect, keep the tradition.

At this later date the shapes become elongated, the lotus and palmette ornament loses colour, sweep and consistency. The hydriae bend their handles more steeply upwards: the row of palmettes enclosed by tendrils is preferred as framing ornament. The figures move more freely in the space, and are also more hastily drawn; in particular the rendering of folds becomes regular. The red stripes, which are painted quite meaninglessly between the folds, no longer remind us that they once indicated sewed parts of garments; white rosettes and red spots serve as surface patterns, a red stroke as border. On the fine hydria in Berlin (Fig.100) probably of Euphronios’ time, which, it istrue, is quite unlike its class, the old round formation of the eye actually approximates to the natural oval.

The links with the red-figured style, especially common love names like Hipparchos, Pedieus, and Leagros, help us to date this style. Thus the circumscribed row of palmettes seems to appear in the early Leagros period (p. 114); the Berlin vase is thus moved to the end of the century, like a group of pelikai with charming genre scenes and a series of other vases of red-figured shape (p. 119).

In the new century the black-figured production gradually dies away. Apart from the Panathenaic amphorae (p. 99) and other vases, which for ritual reasons remain conservative, only trifling small ware keeps up the old style. The prize vases can be followed as votive offerings on the Acropolis, and in exported specimens down into the 4th century, where they are dated to the year by archons’ names (one of 313 B.C. has been found); even in late times they do not give up the old type of Athena, but elongate it to agree with the slender proportions of the vase, and combine other later features with the old picture.

In Boeotia black-figured painting, alongside of primitive attempts to imitate Attic red-figured vases, continued as long in the burlesque parodies of myth of the so-called ‘Kabirion’ vases; black painting on a light ground is found in the early Hellenistic ‘Hadra vases’ made at Alexandria, and similar late phenomena occur in various localities. These late black-figured vases show real progress in nothing but the development of a loose freely moving vegetable ornamentation: but this progress depended on pure brush-technique, not on the old incised style.

PLATE LVII.Fig. 101. ATTIC VASE, LATE BLACK-FIGURED STYLE.

PLATE LVII.

Fig. 101. ATTIC VASE, LATE BLACK-FIGURED STYLE.

Fig. 102. PANATHENAIC AMPHORA.

HOW the sudden change of technique took place, how the idea suggested itself, that instead of painting silhouettes on the ground of the clay, figures drawn in outline should be left free to contrast with the black background, is not yet explained. The inversion of the colour system is not new. From Ionic, Corinthian, Attic, and Boeotian workshops we know of light painting on a dark ground, and a plate from Thera has light figures in added paint and a black background. But this is entirely different from the red-figured style, which uses the ground of the clay for its figures. Only late Klazomenian sarcophagi can be regarded as its earlier stages, and it is quite possible that the new technique was naturalized in Athens by East Ionic painters.

At any rate the idea fell on fruitful soil. The archaic mixture of colour was long worn out, the simplification of colour-effect, by increasing limitation to the two values, clay and glaze, was in full swing, and the effect of big glazed surfaces had been tried in the body-amphorae and in vessels completely covered with black colour (p.108). But more than all else the revolution in figure-drawing which was now setting in strong in the great art was striving for expression in vase painting. A successor of the Athenian Eumares, Kimon of Kleonai, according to Pliny, invented oblique views and foreshortening, rescued the body from archaic stiffness, furnished limbs with joints, for the firsttime rendered veins, and represented folds and swellings of drapery; he must belong to the last third of the century; for his predecessor is father of the sculptor Antenor, who worked, it is true, for the old potter Nearchos (p. 103) but also for the young Athenian Republic (510 B.C.) Though Pliny, after the fashion of ancient historians, is too fond of asserting ‘inventions,’ this much is clear, that after Eumares there was a breach with tradition in Athenian painting, and that here, for the first time in the history of the world, bonds were once for all burst, which hitherto had hardly been touched. Naturally the vase-painters could not be left behind; but since the old silhouette incised style was quite unsuited for the new liberties of drawing, but on the other hand outline drawing on light ground ran counter to the decorative purposes of the vases which used silhouettes, the idea of inverting the colour-scheme must have been received with enthusiasm among the vase-painters.

The new invention unites the enhanced freedom of movement of the draughtsman with a decorative effect which is not inferior to that of the old style. The warm red inner surface of the figures, which the painter can animate by the brilliant sweeping ‘relief lines,’ splendidly contrasts with the wonderful black lustre of the ground. The new style too is a silhouette style, and uses the ornamental effect of the figures. But it contains quite different possibilities, and of itself moves away from the types of the old style and towards an individual treatment of the figures. The contrast between the black silhouette of the man and the white-filled figure of the woman falls away, also the circular shape of the man’s eye connected with the incised style, the gay dresses, and much besides. The red-figured style enters into the characteristic working out of the human body and its parts, the study of drapery folds and the rendering of movement in a living way. But growing naturalism is intrue Greek fashion contemporaneous with adherence to types; formulæ once invented are retained and repeated by different masters, until new discoveries by bolder spirits outdo them and put them in the shade. In the archaic red-figured style this vigorous struggle between formula and bold observation of nature offers an exciting spectacle. Step by step the ground is won from the archaic style, till after a struggle of about fifty years, about the time of the Persian wars, a free rendering of nature is attained, which then lays the foundation for the formation of a new and higher series of types, for the style of Polygnotos and Phidias.

This period may be regarded as the culminating point of vase-painting altogether, if emphasis is laid on the intensity of the line, and on the intimate relation between artist and technique. In it artistic craft had its greatest triumphs and created the most perfect synthesis between ornamental types and delightful naturalism. Potters and painters were never again so conscious of their performances as in this period, never again felt themselves so much as rival individualities. Certainly the old black-figured masters, Timonidas, Klitias, Exekias and Amasis, cannot be denied personal expression. But the red-figured conquerors of nature, each of whom in his own way breaks through the old system of type, produce a far more differentiated effect. It is also a result of the fresh current, which now enters vase-painting, that we can more than ever follow the development of these individualities. The signatures, which are preserved in such number from no other period, give an insight, not merely into the manifold production, but also into the growth of personalities and their struggle for ever new possibilities.

Among the signatures we must distinguish between potters and painters. We must never assume that the‘maker’ is responsible for the adornment of his vases; it looks rather as if the painters had lived pretty independently and been employed first by one and then by another proprietor of a workshop. What it means, that now the potter signs, now the painter, sometimes both together, and that many strong personalities do not sign at all, cannot be made out in the present state of our knowledge.

The love-names help to fix the chronology of the vases still more than in the black-figured style. We saw that Andokides waskalos, when Timagoras’ workshop was in full swing. When he is a full-blown painter, the ‘Epiktetan’ kylikes and an Oxford plate celebrate the youths Stesagoras, Hipparchos and Miltiades. If Miltiades is the victor of Marathon, Stesagoras his brother, and Hipparchos the archon of 496 B.C., their ephebic years and these vases must be fixed about 520 B.C. Memnon’s youth must fall about the same time; for one of the many kylikes with his name, like a lekythos signed by Gales, shows the bard Anakreon, who was entertained by the Pisistratidae, 522-514 B.C. The painters Phintias and Euthymides praise the youth Megakles; now on a votive pinax from the Acropolis this name was replaced later by another, and it is a plausible guess to connect this erasure with the banishment of a Megakles in 486 B.C., who about twenty-five years before might have deserved these praises. The youthful beauty of Leagros is in the time of the vase-painter Euphronios, and anyhow earlier than the destruction of Miletos, in which a Leagros vase was shattered: the Leagros who fell in battle as Strategos 465 B.C., must have been an ephebus in the last decade of the 6th century. His son Glaukon, who was Strategos in 440 B.C., dates the vases which celebrate him with his father’s name a generation later, so about 470 B.C. The only established fact from finds does not contradict the ‘Leagros’ chronology; in the tumulus of

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