Douris and the Painters of Greek Vases

by Edmond Pottier

Fig. 15. HERA AND IRIS ATTACKED BY SILENI.

By Brygos. British Museum.

Douris has extended his composition and united the two reverse sides of the kylix. On one, the hero seizes the goddess, who struggles in his grasp and has summoned to her aid the magic art of transformations. These are given with all the naïveté of primitive art: to tell us that Thetis changes into a lion, and later into a serpent, the artist has drawn on one side a young lion seated on the shoulder of the goddess, and tearing with his teeth the arm of her ravisher; on the other a serpent lifts its twisted coils and darts its threatening jaws at him. The companions of Thetis, the Nereids, frightened by so bold an attack, take flight, and this gives the painter an opportunity of showing us young girls running in many graceful attitudes—the arms are tossed in gestures that are still angular; the bare feet and legs escape from the drapery, showing the rather lean suppleness of these young maidens. It is, at the same time, a skilful method of uniting the whole; in fact, on the other reverse we see other nymphs running, who come to tell the god Nereus and his wife Doris of the attempt. Both are seated on ornamented thrones with the Olympian majesty of a Jupiter and a Juno ([Fig. 13]). All the beauty of the famous group in the Panathenaic Frieze is already visible in their movements and their attitude.

CONTEST OF AJAX AND ULYSSES.

Fig. 16. THE VOTING OF THE GREEK CHIEFS.

By Douris. Vienna Museum.

Unfortunately the interior is defaced and restored, but the artist has shown no less ingenuity in its design. He has taken a theme frequently used by painters of red figures, and thus rendered rather commonplace—the libation; but instead of showing us the well-known scene of a soldier departing on a campaign and receiving the full cup from a woman, he has enlarged the subject, and shows us the god Poseidon seated, receiving a libation cup from the hands of a goddess, probably his wife, Amphitrite. Again a synthetic trilogy prevails in this composition: in the upper part of the vase the god of the sea and his consort are throned; in the lower part is enacted a little drama which takes place on the seashore, and has sea-gods as actors. Everywhere we find the intelligent skill of the Greek, and the easy art with which he beautifies all he touches. Was all this the personal work of Douris? or does the model he copies and follows deserve much of the credit? It will always remain an open question. As we possess a kylix by the potter Hieron (it has even been ascribed to Douris), another by the painter Peithinos, and many anonymous vases which repeat in similar form the details of The Rape of Thetis, we again incline towards the second hypothesis. How many sanctuaries in Greece, dedicated to the gods of the sea, must have contained paintings or reliefs of this kind!

It is the variety of models, in a word, which best explains the variety of styles among painters of vases. As we remarked above, no vase painter is of greater interest in this respect than Douris. If any one wishes to estimate at a single glance his often puzzling versatility, he need only look at the mythological painting on a large receptacle for wine in the British Museum ([Fig. 14]). The choice of the subject, The Bacchic Thiasos, repeated to satiety upon black-figured amphoræ of the sixth century, leads us to expect only a commonplace painting, but the artist instead brings us face to face with one of the most spirited sketches Greek art has left to us.

Douris shows himself daring, amusing, free almost to indecency, and one asks how the same brush which painted many little paintings, rather stiff in their symmetry, could become animated to the point of inventing these funambulistic movements of wild beasts let loose. These are Sileni playing and dancing. Arranged in a row, like mountebanks upon their stage, they abandon themselves to frantic sports under the leadership of a herald costumed as Hermes, on his head the petasos, and in his hand the caduceus. One lowers his head to drink from a cup placed on the floor; a second, in a half-lying position, has the contents of a goat skin and a wine jug poured together into his mouth by two of his companions; others toy in a ludicrous fashion with kantharoi, or dance on one foot, and try by bending forward to reach a full cup. Even expurgated, this painting sufficiently shows the unbridled gaiety and fun which the Greek designer allowed himself. In that again he resembles the Japanese draughtsman, in love with buffooneries and acrobatic postures. Those who only like to think of Greek art as serious and moralizing, can take their own view. Greek art knew all and dared all—works such as were placed upon school walls to elevate thought, and such as were hidden under a cloak. The same brush drew the touching image of Eos and Memnon, and this scene of a pagan, Kermesse.