The time of the “Fine Style” was the time of Pericles, of Aspasia, of Æschylus, of Phidias; the time when the most beautiful of the beautiful Greek temples was built on the Acropolis sacred to Minerva; when sculpture, painting, poetry, and architecture, reached their height; when the human form and the human face arrived at such a divine beauty as they had never reached since the days of paradise, and have not again reached. In this wonderful time the Greek vase was born into its perfect form.
Some peculiarities of the old or Archaic style, after it passed the simple method of decoration already described, and when it began to treat the human figure, are thus specified by Mr. Birch: “The faces of the females are white to indicate superior delicacy of complexion, and the pupils of their eyes, which are more elongated than those of the male figures, are red. The eyes of the men are engraved and of a form inclining to oval, the pupils circular. The eyes of the women are sometimes made like those of men, especially on those vases on which the faces are colored black upon a white ground. The forms are rather full and muscular, the noses long, the eyes oblique and in profile, the pupil as if seen in front, the extremities long and not carefully finished, the outlines rigid, the attitudes à plomb, the knees and elbows rectangular, the draperies stiff, and describing perpendicular, angular, and precise oval lines. The faces are generally in profile, full faces being very rare.”
We quote again as to the work upon the Fine style: “In this the figures are still red, and the black grounds are occasionally very dark and lustrous. The ornaments are in white, and so are the letters. The figures have lost that hardness which at first characterized them; the eyes are no longer represented oblique and in profile; the extremities are finished with greater care, the chin and nose are more rounded, and
Fig. 40.—Krater (Vase Campanienne), from the Louvre.
have lost the extreme elongation of the earlier school. The limbs are fuller and thicker, the faces noble, the hair of the head and beard treated with greater breadth and mass, as in the style of the painter Zeuxis, who gave more flesh to his figures, in order to make them appear of greater breadth and more grandiose, adopting the ideas of Homer, who represents even his females of large proportions. The great charm of these designs is the beauty of the composition and the more perfect proportion of the figures. The head is oval, three-quarters of which are comprised from the chin to the ear, thus affording a guide to its proportions, which are far superior to those of the previous figures. The disproportionate shape of the limbs disappears, and the countenance assumes its natural form and expression. The folds of the drapery, too, are freer, and the attitudes have lost their ancient rigidity. The figures are generally large, and arranged in groups of two or three on each side, occupying about two-thirds of the height of the vase.”