CHAPTER VI.THE STYLE OF POLYGNOTOS AND PHEIDIAS

Fig. 125. BRONZE-FOUNDRY: FROM A KYLIX WITH THE â€œLOVE-NAMEâ€ OF DIOGENES.

PLATE LXXVIFig. 126. CENTAUROMACY: FROM A RED-FIGURED KYLIX.

PLATE LXXVI

Fig. 126. CENTAUROMACY: FROM A RED-FIGURED KYLIX.

IN the studio of Euphronios the so-called â€˜Horse masterâ€™ painted a kylix now in Berlin with the praise of the fair Glaukon. The outside is decorated in the usual red-figured technique with lively scenes of riders and stables, the inside (a youth and a girl) is rendered in outline, with coloured interior lines and surfaces, on the ground covered with a white slip. The progress in the rendering of bodies and drapery is unmistakeable; the oblique view of the female breast is almost correctly caught, the material of the cloaks is packed in lost folds with bent-round end. But even the whole conception of the figures goes far beyond the archaic art of the pre-Persian time: the proportions and faces have a touch of greatness, beside which all preceding art seems narrow and embarrassed. The simplification of the profile and the severe long lower part of the face essentially determine oneâ€™s impression of the heads. A new period is announcing itself: a time of progressive naturalism and at the same time a period of noble greatness of style and exalted types. The statements of the ancients as to the great painting of this age, of Polygnotos and his company, lay stress on these qualities; not only the progress, which relieves the rendering of body and garment of the old stiffness, but the great Ethos of these paintings is praised. So with good reason we call the vase painting of the post-Persian generation Polygnotan, even if at the beginning of this epoch the influence of the great art is not felt so much as at its culmination.

The name of Glaukon, which we have met with on the Euphronios kylix of Berlin, recurs on a series of vases, almost always in the two-line arrangement, which comes now into vogue, and often in combination with his father Leagrosâ€™ name. Lekythoi, or slender oil-flasks, which now become the regular offering for graves, and when so employed invariably use the white-ground technique of the Berlin kylix, afford several examples of this favouriteâ€™s name, which has become the hinge of vase-chronology. On a Bonn fragment (Fig.128), which in the older style has a domestic scene, not one taken from the cemetery, and paints the flesh in white, a woman is sitting in an arm-chair and putting on a golden necklace, which the handmaid in front of her has offered in a box. The face of this woman signifies a new world: the archaic types are discarded, the old traditions replaced by a quite individual almost portrait-like conception. The eye, which has hardly any traces of the old full-view and puts the pupil entirely into the open inner corner, gives the face a very natural and living effect, it is really looking: and the hair hanging out from the cap in confusion, the profile not dominated by any canon of beauty, and the drawing of the hands, show the painter penetrated by the same effort after truth. It is perhaps an idle question, what period inaugurates the history of Greek portraiture, since each innovation taken from the model individualizes the traditional type; but it is just the vase-paintings of the post-Persian, Kimonian age, which went further than the later ones in thus individualizing. The woman of the Glaukon lekythos, the old woman on a skyphos in Schwerin from the workshop of Pistoxenos (Fig.127) and on a loutrophoros in Athens, the head of a warrior from a krater in New York (Fig.130) may be taken as symptoms of a very personal portraiture in the age of Kimon. The effort to get rid of the traditional ideal types led a series of these

PLATE LXXVII.Fig. 127. OLD WOMAN: FROM A SKYPHOS WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER PISTOXENOS.

PLATE LXXVII.

Fig. 127. OLD WOMAN: FROM A SKYPHOS WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER PISTOXENOS.

Fig. 128. DETAIL OF A FRAGMENTARY WHITE-GROUND LEKYTHOS.

PLATE LXXVIII.Fig. 129. APHRODITE ON A GOOSE: FROM A KYLIX WITH WHITE-GROUND INTERIOR. BEARING THE â€œLOVE-NAMEâ€ OF GLAUKON.

PLATE LXXVIII.

Fig. 129. APHRODITE ON A GOOSE: FROM A KYLIX WITH WHITE-GROUND INTERIOR. BEARING THE â€œLOVE-NAMEâ€ OF GLAUKON.

Fig. 130. WARRIOR: FROM A RED-FIGURED KRATER.

masters to recast even the divine figures with a strikingly individual, coarse and almost common effect. The master of the Boston â€˜Eosâ€™ kylix, a successor of Makron in Hieronâ€™s studio, makes his undistinguished goddess of the morning be carried off by a spindly street-lad; the Demeter, who on a Munich hydria attends the departure of Triptolemos, betrays little of the sacred beauty of the motherly goddess; and other vase-paintings have almost the effect of conscious caricatures of ideal types.

The new possibilities of â€˜Physiognomyâ€™ in differentiating character by the facial type, however, brought the expression of divine nature to its fullest expansion, and helped not merely to make men more human but also gods more divine. A London white-ground kylix from Rhodes (Fig.129) is connected with the Bonn lekythos and the Berlin kylix of Euphronios by the common name of Glaukon. The goddess of love, riding through the air on her sacred bird, the goose, is of more than earthly beauty: her hands, not only the one with the flower but the unoccupied left hand, speak the same expressive language as her face and whole form. The effect of this picture is comparable to that of a song. Now for the first time the inner kinship of the art of words with that of pictures presses itself on the observer of works of art. No one will think of comparing the Geometric style with the Homeric Epic in value of expression, or the ornamental style of the 7th century with contemporary Lyric poetry, though one may see a reflection of Anacreontic and ballad feeling in the art of the later 6th century. But the weight of the Aeschylean pathos is as little to be mistaken in works of graphic and plastic art as the Sophoclean glow and pure beauty of line.

The more delicate animation, which this period could bestow on its forms, of itself pointed away from archaic loquacity and pleasure in narration. The genre scene iscertainly as old as the historical, and we have seen that there was no difference of principle. The nearer the red-figured style came, the more representations of feeling were combined with representations of action, and towards the end of the archaic style they are no longer rarities. With the new liberation of the style, especially with the enlivening of the eye, a different sort of inward feeling asserts itself. Figures devoid of action, occupied with themselves or contemplating another figure, are themes which the painters of lekythoi in particular were never tired of inventing; and in later times, when the cemetery scenes replaced the domestic ones on these vases, and the privacy of the indoor scenes was transferred to the visit to the grave, the harmony of soul between the visitor and the dead, whose living likeness fancy could not separate from the grave, often found an unspeakably intimate expression (p. 145).

The quantity of pictures of â€˜pure existenceâ€™ does much to determine the altered aspect presented by post-Persian vase-painting. On the slim â€˜Nolanâ€™ amphorae and those with twisted handles, on the calyx-kraters and the bell-kraters often decorated on the mouth with a branch, on the â€˜stamnoiâ€™ and other vases, which are decorated like the â€˜Nolan,â€™ the slender restful figures heighten the impression of quiet elegance. Thus the grandeur of the new style at the same time gets a marked decorative value, a value not without danger for the living rendering of reality. Greatness is not every manâ€™s affair, and the painters, who only took over externally the big forms and the lofty simplicity, and could not fill them with a life of their own, can only rank as decorative artists and should by the same right be called â€˜affectedâ€™ as the refined masters of the Amasis period (p. 106). Even talented painters consciously gave up to decorative effect the reverses of their vases, which they adorn with quickly drawn motionless figures wrapped in cloaks.

PLATE LXXIX.Fig. 131. THE DEATH OF AKTAION: FROM A RED-FIGURED KRATER.From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

PLATE LXXIX.

Fig. 131. THE DEATH OF AKTAION: FROM A RED-FIGURED KRATER.

From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

The three Glaukon representations we have met with till now are pure pictures of â€˜existence.â€™ The â€˜horseâ€™ master dedicated to the same boy Glaukon a second kylix, the fragments of which, found on the Acropolis, represent the death of Orpheus at the hands of the Thracian women. The scheme, if one may speak of such, is in so far old, as the victor moving to the right attacks an opponent in kneeling position also moving to the right and looking round; but an infinite nobility is poured over the old type, and the fight is carried through with dramatic weight, though in the faces of the fighters the inward excitement is not reflected, as on later works of the same hand. Yet, as on the Aphrodite kylix (Fig.129) the living expression of the eye is already strengthened by the line of the upper lid.

In place of the very fragmentary Orpheus kylix, the fight in a contemporary picture may show the progress, which scenes of dramatic movement attain in Polygnotan times. The slaying of Aktaion by the divine huntress Artemis was brought to great effect by the Pan master, so called from the reverse of the same Boston bell-krater (Fig.131). In the stiff folds of the cloak of Artemis this vigorous and original painter betrays his descent from the archaic style, which can be plainly followed in his works, always full as they are of dramatic life. Otherwise there is little archaic in this picture. The long lower part of the face, which lends the heads their severity, the folds running themselves out, which assert themselves even in the chiton, the surely drawn fore-shortened foot of Artemis, the lower legs of Aktaion disappearing in the background, show the progressive master; the suggestive effect of the composition, and the urgent language of the gestures are quite in the spirit of the noble new style.

With the Centaur psykter in Rome (Fig.132) we getperhaps beyond the bloom of Glaukonâ€™s beauty, and what reminds us of old times in the grotesque movement of the battle scene is probably only individual failings of the master, which he outweighs by many innovations. The three-quarters view of the face, the fore-shortening of the shield, the motive of the falling man seen from behind, are significant of the struggle with perspective; the bestial lust for battle speaks out of the eyes of the attackers as does the penetrating pain of the wounded; and the pathos of the gestures is at least post-archaic. The impression of this vase is remarkably determined by the experiments in colouring, which the master undertakes with help of thinned colour: the helmets, greaves, and hides he has made dark in contrast with the human skin, he has given an effect of light to the material of the hair of head and beard, and rounded the horsesâ€™ bodies by shading.

These novelties of the somewhat crude and quaint master are only intelligible as reflection of a great painting, which struggled with problems of expression and light, as is expressly testified for the art of the great Polygnotos and his contemporaries. Naturally at no time were vase-painters entirely uninfluenced by the achievements of the great art. But just now in the sixties of the 5th century, this borrowing made itself felt more than ever, and enticed the vase-painters often beyond the limits of their branch of art. This comes not only from the overpowering impression of the great personalities among the painters of this period, but especially from the fact, that wall-painting now struck out new bold paths, on which vase-painting could follow it less than ever.

Among the vase-pictures, which very strongly echo these new strains, are the later works of the â€˜horseâ€™ master. The interior of the Penthesileia kylix (Fig.134) only enclosed by a delicate branch, the master did not paint as in

PLATE LXXX.Fig. 132. BATTLE WITH CENTAURS: RED-FIGURED PSYKTER.

PLATE LXXX.

Fig. 132. BATTLE WITH CENTAURS: RED-FIGURED PSYKTER.

Fig. 133.TOP-PLAYER: FROM A WHITE-GROUND KYLIX WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER HEGESIBULOS.

Fig. 133.

TOP-PLAYER: FROM A WHITE-GROUND KYLIX WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER HEGESIBULOS.

PLATE LXXXI.Fig. 134. ACHILLES KILLS PENTHESILEIA: INTERIOR OF A RED-FIGURED KYLIX.From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

PLATE LXXXI.

Fig. 134. ACHILLES KILLS PENTHESILEIA: INTERIOR OF A RED-FIGURED KYLIX.

From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

the kylikes of Berlin and Athens on white ground, but he heightens the red-figured technique by the application of thinned black glaze, by dull red and light grey surfaces, with brown and white additions, and by applications of gold. The four figures which are forced into this circle almost burst the frame, not merely by the disproportion of their tall forms, but still more by their inner greatness and passion. In the midst of the battle-field, where the sword rages, and the ground lies full of corpses, Achilles has overtaken the Amazon queen, and furious with rage, plunges his sword in her heart: however much her hands and eyes plead for mercy, it is too late.

The features of Penthesileia betray more of inner life than those of Orpheus: and on a second Munich kylix, on which Apollo in presence of Ge slays her son Tityos, the master has gone a step further in physiognomy. The three faces are as convincingly graduated in expression as for example those on the beautiful â€˜Lament for the dead,â€™ by a contemporary master, in Athens.

On the big interior of his kylikes (Fig.134) the â€˜horseâ€™ master could give freer play to his genius than on the exteriors, which, as in the kylikes of Berlin and Athens, he adorned with pretty scenes from the stable. The contrast between the great round pictures with their fine technique, and the lightly sketched exteriors, is so great, that some have thought of two artists working in the same studio, who divided the work, so that the â€˜horseâ€™ master would be different from the Penthesileia master; but the white-ground exterior of the Orpheus kylix seems to build the bridge. It is certainly characteristic that the exteriors of kylikes in this period no longer tempted talented painters to such lively compositions, as in the days of the Brygos and Perugia painters, and that even in the lifetime of the great Euphronios the paratactic decorativestyle most consistently prepared by Duris laid hold of these exteriors. The new style required big surfaces, and the most faithful reflexions of wall-painting are to be found on large vases.

The most famous of these great Polygnotan vases is the Paris calyx-krater from Orvieto (Fig.135), the figures of which, apart from Athena and Herakles, have not yet been certainly identified. From the expectant attitude of the figures it has been suggested that the picture represents the start of the Argonauts, or the preparation of the Attic heroes for the battle of Marathon. The great mythological scene is at any rate in the manner of the new period, which no longer has the preference of the ancients for the crisis of action but rather depicts preparation and after-effect, reflection on the deed accomplished and rest from action. That a Polygnotan wall-painting preceded the vase-painting in this psychologically refined conception, may be regarded as proved. For the figures not only appear in all sorts of bold foreshortenings, front and side views, not only surprise us by an abundance of motives, which are quite beyond previous vase-painting, but also show a series of peculiarities, which are expressly described as innovations of the great fresco-painter. When the figures of the krater open their mouths and show their teeth, when the stationary interior folds, the so-called drapery eyes have shadows painted in them, this can only be explained as imitation of the great painters, and similarly the gnashing of teeth and the shading of the horsesâ€™ bellies on the Centaur psykter. The Argonautic krater shows this dependence very strongly in its composition. Great painting had not only graduated the parts of the body in deep spatial layers, but transferred this novel deepening to the arrangement of its groups, distributing the actors over hilly country, which either elevated

PLATE LXXXII.Fig. 135. THE ARGONAUTS (?). KALIX-KRATER OF POLYGNOTAN PERIOD.From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

PLATE LXXXII.

Fig. 135. THE ARGONAUTS (?). KALIX-KRATER OF POLYGNOTAN PERIOD.

From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

the figures of the background or often partly concealed them. It is clear that an art, which characterized the rounding of shields and bodies and the recesses of drapery by the distribution of light and shade, also gave actuality and effect of depth to the landscape by shading, though in primitive fashion, and a series of â€˜Polygnotanâ€™ vases proves the fact, by making flowers, bushes and plants spring out of the ground. It is true the painter of the Argonaut krater does not go so far, but he shows more strikingly than any other vase-painter the landscape of Polygnotan paintings, which, not forgetting the surface effect of vase-decoration, he does not shade but only indicates in outline by the incising tool. That in other ways, too, he altered his pattern to suit the technique of vase-painting, is proved by the freedom in the use of colour and perspective, which on other specimens of this period burst the barriers of vase-painting.

Both encouraged and warned by such examples, one must look through the vase-painting of this period for other traces of Polygnotan painting, especially on vases which agree in subject with the wall-paintings of which we have accounts, and not only in the freedom named, but also in the inferiority of the execution to the conception, show of what spirit they are the offspring. One can never expect copies. The very fact that exact replicas never occur among the Polygnotan types, shows that the vase-painters dealt with the borrowed property according to their own individuality and for their definite purpose. So the two cases we have selected must be judged individually. The â€˜Penthesileiaâ€™ master was probably stimulated to his treatment of the theme by a big Amazon painting; but the clever painter not merely translated this impulse into his own brilliant technique and adapted it to his circular field, but also extended over it his personal great feeling, andtranslated the picture into his personal style, so that it has the effect of a natural continuation of his earlier works. The â€˜Argonautâ€™ master had no concern with this great â€˜Ethosâ€™ or the delicate polychrome technique. He borrowed more superficially, took an extract from the big scene of his model in his strong relief-lines, and emphasized the individual characteristics rather than the dash of the original. In realism, his bearded hero holding a spear is not inferior to the contemporary warrior of the New York krater (Fig.130). Great painting went on tempestuously developing, and in the next age burst its fetters of colour and space in a manner which could not but deter even the boldest vase-painter from imitation, if he were not to shake off every sane regard for the preservation of his surface-effect. So reflexions of wall-painting on vases become rarer, and the â€˜Polygnotanâ€™ vases remain an episode.

Naturally there were many vase-painters who did not enter this dangerous ground: nay, the majority did not do so. With many the avoidance of a big surface went so far that they divided the outside of a calyx-krater or big â€˜aryballosâ€™ into two friezes and filled them with small figures in defiance of constructive considerations. Out of the series of these â€˜little masters,â€™ who beside the big-figure painters continued the traditions of the elegant style, let us mentione.g.the painter who decorated the box signed by the potter Megakles (Fig.136-7) with charming scenes from womenâ€™s apartments, and the lid with five comic hares; or the author of the girl plying the top on a white-ground kylix of the potter Hegesibulos (Fig.133), a potter who was active as early as the Leagros period; and especially Sotades, from whose workshop came not only plastic vases in the shapes of horses, sphinxes, knuckle-bones, crocodiles devouring negroes, etc., but also white-ground kylikes of most elegant shape, whose exquisite interiors, like the friezes of those

PLATE LXXXIII.Figs. 136 & 137.LID AND SIDE OF A PYXIS WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER MEGAKLES.

PLATE LXXXIII.

Figs. 136 & 137.

LID AND SIDE OF A PYXIS WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER MEGAKLES.

Fig. 138. MAENADS: FROM A RED-FIGURED POINTED AMPHORA.

PLATE LXXXIV.Fig. 139. POLYNEIKES OFFERS ERIPHYLE THE NECKLACE: FROM A RED-FIGURED PELIKE.From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

PLATE LXXXIV.

Fig. 139. POLYNEIKES OFFERS ERIPHYLE THE NECKLACE: FROM A RED-FIGURED PELIKE.

From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

Fig. 140.ORPHEUS AMONG THE THRACIANS: FROM A RED-FIGURED KRATER.

Fig. 140.

ORPHEUS AMONG THE THRACIANS: FROM A RED-FIGURED KRATER.

drinking vessels, lead us to the beginning of the age of Pheidias.

This transition is also accompanied by some paintersâ€™ signatures, which become rarer, the more the individual performances of vase-painters are cast in the shade by the great art. The signatures do not present us with the first artists of the time. Hermonax is somewhat smooth and tedious, and Polygnotos, the namesake of the great painter, to judge from the mixed nature of his unoriginal style, must have lived by borrowing. His pelike from Gela is a Polygnotan vase with an Amazon scene; on the London stamnos, to be dated about the middle of the century, advanced and old-fashioned types are combined in an unpleasing fashion.

Anonymous masters better represent the transition from Polygnotos to Pheidias. The master of a krater with a dancing scene in Rome (the â€˜Villa Giuliaâ€™ master), is not distinguished for temperament and progressiveness, but is rather a correct and academic individual; but the neatly drawn scenes of his krater and stamnoi, in the noble bearing of the figures and the manner in which they gaze at each other, betray the approach of a new ideal of man. Much more talented is the master, who on a pointed amphora at Paris combined the wonderful group of two Maenads (Fig.138) with a scene of Bacchic revelry, as Amasis did almost a century before (Fig.98). The two girls are of truly royal dignity, like each other in this, but subtly distinguished in expression. The three-quarter view of the head is almost devoid of harshness, and only the ladle-shaped under lip connects her with the Polygnotan female heads.

How even the drapery becomes a vehicle of expression and every fold breathes the greatness of the whole picture, may become clearer if we look at the â€˜Eriphyleâ€™ of a pelike at Lecce (Fig.139), with which we also pass the middle of the century. This picture must be compared to theCorinthian Amphiaraos krater (Fig.66) to see, how in the interval of 120-130 years the soul of art has changed. The later master represents not the dramatic culmination of the story but the psychological climax, when Polyneikes offers to the wife of Amphiaraos the seductive necklace, for which she will send her husband to death. As often on vases of this period, two figures stand calmly facing one another, but they are here united by most delicate psychology; Eriphyle, simply attired in plain peplos, is full of an inner life which circulates through her body to the finger-tips. This harmonious union of a monumental type with intimate feeling is at the beginning of the most Greek period of Greek art-history, the most human period of the history of mankind, the age of Pheidias.

If we name the following decades of the history of vase-painting after Pheidias, we do not mean that he was in very close relations with the art of the vase-painters. But the artist, who in the Parthenon frieze introduced that inconceivable nobility of form, who in the West side of the frieze developed the play of lines to new greatness, to heighten it in the pediment to a great outburst of passion, impressed this age so much with his nature that one cannot imagine the vase-paintings as unaffected by this powerful influence.

Never was Greek art so much an art of expression as at this period. As if in response to the search for a word to describe this new expression, the beautiful musical pictures of the time present themselves. Since the Geometric style art had continually represented musical performers, but it was reserved for the age of Pheidias to give pictorial expression to the effect of musical sounds on men. The krater from Gela (Fig.140) belongs to the early Periclean age; the sure touch in the rendering of a twist of the body and its rounded form is now a matter of course even in the hasty execution of a second-rate draughtsman; the head type gets the

PLATE LXXXV.Fig. 141. MUSIC: RED-FIGURED NECKED AMPHORA.

PLATE LXXXV.

Fig. 141. MUSIC: RED-FIGURED NECKED AMPHORA.

PLATE LXXXVI.Fig. 142. SLEEP AND DEATH CARRY OUT A WARRIOR TO BURIAL: WHITE-GROUND LEKYTHOS.

PLATE LXXXVI.

Fig. 142. SLEEP AND DEATH CARRY OUT A WARRIOR TO BURIAL: WHITE-GROUND LEKYTHOS.

square outline, the shortened jaw, the long drawn nose, which are characteristic of the age of Pheidias; the repetition of the epithetkalosshows that the custom of inscribing a love-name is dying out. About contemporary is the London amphora with twisted handles (Fig.141) with the Muses Melusa and Terpsichore and the bard Musaios. Orpheus among the Thracians and Terpsichore in a reverie with the harp are purely pictures of lyric feeling.

As if music had tamed them, the vase-pictures of the Periclean age change their nature. All crudities have gone: the too bold foreshortenings and the realistic details taken from great paintings are less obvious: nothing any longer disturbs the free play of the lines. The conception of men rises to its highest possible point. The figures on the Munich stamnos (Fig.146) are not merely masterpieces of fully developed drawing but also ideal types of pure free humanity. Movements are often merely motives of beauty: the fold style combines a new naturalism with the most monumental effect.

This new spirit also animates the finest of the white-ground lekythoi, whose proper history begins in the Glaukon period (p. 134) and cannot be traced far beyond the 5th century. In their first period they had preferred to render domestic scenes, representations from the female apartments. But the purpose of these grave vases continually asserts itself more and more. The ferryman of the dead appears, to take goodly men into his bark; the brothers Sleep and Death dispose of the corpse (Fig.142); Hermes, the conductor of souls, waits to be followed; the dead man laments for his life. But the domestic scenes have given place to the walk to the grave; and the visit to the tombstone, beside which the dead man stands or sits as if alive, becomes the typical subject of the lekythoi. The special technique of these vases produces an effect often verydifferent from the red-figured style, especially since the white filling of the outlines (p. 134) is dropped. The employment of glaze-colour in the rendering of outlines, and the transition to brush-painting, with which from the first surfaces had been covered in different varieties of colour, lead afterwards to an unusual individualization of the line. One cannot say that this technique approximates the lekythoi to the effect of wall-painting as much as it severs it from red-figured vase-painting. Only a few exceptional late specimens in their pictures operating freely with light and shade burst the bounds of vase-decoration, and show clearly with what good sense the vase-painters renounced competition with the great art, which now victoriously solves the problems of full perspective, of giving the effect of depth in space, with the gradation of dimensions, and the contrasts of light and dark.

In a Boston lekythos (Figs.143and144) we have an â€˜existenceâ€™ picture in the manner of the new period (p. 136). The dead warrior stands in Polygnotan attitude, with bent arm resting on his hip (cp. Fig. 135, last to left), beside his altar-shaped tomb, and looks over it to the girl, who without perceiving him approaches with funeral offerings. One notices in the treatment of the nude, that he is the product of an age which already had the perspective sense: so vividly do the few lines of his contour, his muscles, and his knee-pan, give the suggestion of a rounded body; and also the drawing of the female nude, which accident has freed from the drapery added in perishable dull paint, in its very realistic outline goes beyond anything previous. Since the Circe and Phineus kylikes, and the numerous black-figured and red-figured pictures of bathing, dancing, and drinking hetairai, art had busied itself with the naked bodies of women as much as of men: and where nudity could not be represented, it indicated the outlines of the body through

PLATE LXXXVII.Figs. 143 & 144. YOUTH AND MAIDEN ON A WHITE-GROUND LEKYTHOS.

PLATE LXXXVII.

Figs. 143 & 144. YOUTH AND MAIDEN ON A WHITE-GROUND LEKYTHOS.

Fig. 145. WOMAN SEATED AT A GRAVESTONE: FROM A WHITE-GROUND LEKYTHOS.

the cover of the drapery (p. 119). For Polygnotos we have the express tradition of women with transparent garments, and on the Argonaut krater even Athenaâ€™s grand forms are indicated; the great liberator of wall-painting must also have been a pioneer in the drawing of the female body. The new style here too brings perfection and fills the form of women with its noble greatness and simplicity. That it too, in contrast with the 4th century, eschews all that is typically feminine, soft and unformed, is a proof how strong was the ideal of male beauty.

A London lekythos (Fig.142) also represents a dead soldier at the grave. The winged brothers Sleep and Death with tender hand dispose of his corpse, as they do with the dead Sarpedon in the Iliad: and the lekythos-painter took his type also from the Sarpedon pictures; the young warrior who had fallen far from his country, should on the vase have the same boon of burial in his native soil, as was granted by Zeus to the Lycian king. The fine type was then divested of its proper meaning and received a more general signification. The London vase, which uses lustreless colours for the outlines of its figures also, must be somewhat later than the Boston vase, although the new technique, that is pure brush technique, went on for a time beside the old. Though stylistic estimates now become difficult, one fancies in the wonderful vigour of the drawing, and in the stronger individuality of the hair, that one is nearer to the period of the Parthenon pediments than in the somewhat more austere Boston group. Where the way led may be shown by the woman sitting on the steps of a tomb on a lekythos in Athens (Fig.145), which not only by the strongly plastic suggestion of the outline goes beyond the Pheidian period proper, but also in the grandiose heightening of the simple motive shows itself as one of the works which take up and cast in new moulds the pathos ofthe Parthenon pediments. Every line in the very individual drawing of the woman, who is supporting her left hand and lifting her garment with her right, while her feet are unruly in submitting to the sitting posture, is animated by passionate unrest.

Though the age of Pheidias liked pictures of feeling with quiet figures like the music-scenes, the Munich stamnos and the lekythoi, it did not exhaust itself in them. Beside the vases with large figures, there are others, which continue to cultivate the elegant style and prepare the way for a class which flourishes in the last decades of the century. Little jugs with nursery scenes, pomade boxes with pictures of female life, globular unguent pots with lekythos-like mouth are the principal vehicles of this style, and the â€œEretriaâ€ master is a typical representative. On great and small vases we find scenes of animated motion, passionate scenes of conflict, which on their side too, share in the nobility of the style of the age. The brutal vigour and hardness of old motives seems broken, softened, often almost takes a turn to elegance. The order of the large compositions with its arrangement of the figures over one another and indication of the broken ground by lines closely follows the Polygnotan system. But while the Polygnotan depth in space was produced by a naturalistic tendency, which soon led to complete freedom in the great art, it is continued by the vase-painters as a mere principle of distribution and space-filling,i.e., it receives a decorative character.

One of the finest pictures of movement from this period decorates a stamnos at Naples (Fig.147): women who are sacrificing before a tree-trunk dressed out as Dionysos and dancing to the tambourine. The exact dating of this picture, like the whole chronology of the late and post-Pheidian vases, is a matter of dispute: but this much is certain, that it cannot be understood except as a near echo of the art of

PLATE LXXXVIII.Fig. 146. RED-FIGURED STAMNOS.

PLATE LXXXVIII.

Fig. 146. RED-FIGURED STAMNOS.

Fig. 147. OFFERINGS AT THE IMAGE OF DIONYSOS: FROM A RED-FIGURED STAMNOS.

PLATE LXXXIX.Fig. 148. PELOPS AND HIPPODAMEIA: FROM A RED-FIGURED NECKED AMPHORA.From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

PLATE LXXXIX.

Fig. 148. PELOPS AND HIPPODAMEIA: FROM A RED-FIGURED NECKED AMPHORA.

From FurtwÃ¤ngler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

the Parthenon pediments. Into the noble line-drawing of the middle style of Pheidias has come a new passionate movement, which draws the contour in more violent curves, dissolves the hair in strong waves, throws the drapery into great folds, and enlivens the clinging parts with restlessly curving inner folds. The upper garment of Dionysos is given rich effect by long border zig-zags, interspersed stars and an embroidered wreath, the expression of his eyes is strengthened by emphasis on the upper lid. Details added in white and liberal use of thinned black heighten the coloured effect. This new style with its marked enhancement of the lines is the later style of Pheidias, a reflection of the last and highest development of the Parthenon master, which pointed Attic art into new paths, and lived its life out and died in the school of Pheidias.

The amphora with twisted handles at Arezzo (Fig.148) must be in close connection with the last phase of the Pheidian style and cannot be far removed from the Naples stamnos. Its shape enriches the type of the Terpischore vase in London (Fig.141) by sharper profiling of the mouth and foot, but does not yet draw the lower part into the dull curve, which robs the amphorae and bell-kraters of the end of the century of strong and taut effect. Similarly the scene, the wild career of Pelops and Hippodameia over the sea, heightens the tendencies of Pheidian art without succumbing to the palsy which can be felt in the style of Meidias. The divine horses, the gift of Poseidon, emit sparks of the fire of the steeds on the pediments; the majestically animated attitude of Hippodameia reminds one of the Athenian lekythos (Fig.145); in Pelops every line is full of passion and bold movement. Here too the draperies are rich and elaborate, the restless billowing of the folds is more marked than on the Naples stamnos, and the flowing chiton folds, which cling close to the body, prepare for the exaggeration dear to post-Pheidian sculpture and painting. Not only does the drawing of individual forms show a plastic conception of space, but the whole scene is inconceivable without a contemporary big painting with considerable landscape capacities: from the tree-clad hilly coast the chariot rushes out upon the deep sea.

In fiery impetus only one of the vase-paintings of this period can compare with the Pelops vase, the somewhat later Naples fragment of a Gigantomachia (Fig.149-151). An invention of truly Titanic force, which is also echoed on other later vases, must be the basis of this picture, and even the unusual division (unsuited to vases) by an arch points to a model from another branch of art. In a rocky landscape the fight for existence of the gods and the sons of the earth-goddess takes place in the early morning, when Helios is rising on the vault of heaven and Selene is sinking down into ocean, as on the east pediment of the Parthenon. The bold movements, the twistings and bendings of the combatants, the â€˜lostâ€™ profile, the swellings and packings of the skin and muscles are rendered with sure touch. The plastic effect of the middle line of chest and abdomen is increased by doubling, and horizontal folds bring out the lower part of the forehead, the locks of hair and tips of hide flutter as if they were alive; the breasts of the earth-goddess are modelled out of the drapery as if bare, the eyes are deep-set, the underlips project.

That the rendering of the female body was now not less accomplished than that of the male, beside the lekythos in Athens, a picture of a different order may show. On an Oxford jug appears in the spaciousness favoured by these vases an old theme, Satyr and Nymph (Fig.154). One can scarcely realize the nobility of Pheidian conception more fully than by comparing this scene with the Phineus kylix (Fig.74) and its congeners. What early ages had represented

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