Douris and the Painters of Greek Vases

by Edmond Pottier

In Athens this surprised no one. We have, however, classified our artists, and confined them to their specialities. We do not admit that a “serious” artist could cause laughter, and we have our professional caricaturists. Leonardo da Vinci, it is true, did not disdain to draw the grotesque. Neither ancient painting nor sculpture feared the ugly or the comic; but they gave to each a meaning. They did not cause laughter for the sake of laughing. They did not cause fear for the sake of frightening. These important elements in real life have a symbolic and allegoric meaning. The head of Medusa appears as a survival of vanished monsters, which terrified man when he sought to establish his dominion on earth. The Learnæan hydra is, on the most ancient vases, a gigantic octopus gripping Herakles and Iolaos, as the octopus clasps Gilliatt in Les travailleurs de la mer. The grimacing mask of the satyr is the inheritance of a very early conception transformed by art. It would not be difficult to prove, documents in hand, that the large anthropoid apes met by the Phœnicians in their explorations in Africa, and drawn by them on their metal cups of the seventh century, furnished the Ionian artists, when combined with the Bes of the Egyptians, with the prototype of the hairy and shaggy Silenus, with the flat-nosed face, that one sees on certain sarcophagi of Klazomenai. This is what we admire in the Sileni of Douris. The skilful, dry point of the artist knew how to preserve, when he sketched them on clay, all their simian agility, their droll, gorilla-like features, the relaxed, sinewy and flexible limbs, wherein we recognize the vigorous beast in semblance of a man. We only know of one other artist who has rendered this bounding animal gait of the Sileni with equal success—the painter of a kylix from the workshop of the potter Brygos, which is undoubtedly inspired by a satyric drama; here the goddess Hera and her companion Iris are in great distress through falling into the midst of such a wild band. Fortunately Hermes with fair words, and Herakles with his club, arrive in time to restrain these rash and disrespectful fellows ([Fig. 15]).

Fig. 17. ULYSSES RESTORING THE ARMS OF ACHILLES TO NEOPTOLEMOS.

Interior of preceding Cup.

Let us finish this review of the mythological subjects with a kylix from the Museum in Vienna on which we see The Contest over the Arms of Achilles (Figs. [16] and [17]). It will give us an opportunity of studying dramatic themes in the hands of Douris, drawn from epic poetry, and adopted by the writers of tragedy. We know how, later, Sophocles in his Ajax with the Scourge, showed the fatal result of the unexpected quarrel arising between Ulysses and Ajax for the possession of the divine weapons, which Thetis had given to her son Achilles. This event was a favourite theme, and had been treated in ceramic painting from the sixth century onwards. In what work and what kind of production did Douris seek his inspiration? We shall always remain ignorant of this. We only wish to show by this example in how great a measure the Greek theatre influenced composition and even the style of painted vases.

Several black-figured vases, some of which are in the Louvre, represent this Contest; the two heroes have come to blows and are falling upon each other fiercely, while Agamemnon and other Greeks exert themselves to separate them. This fundamental theme was not lost on Douris, for he made use of it on one of the reverses of his kylix ([Fig. 16]). But, following his fancy or other models of which we know nothing, he adds two other episodes: (1) on the other reverse, The Voting of the Greek Chiefs, who all bring their votes in the shape of pebbles, and place them on an altar in the presence of the goddess Athene, thus awarding the victory to Ulysses ([Fig. 16]); (2) in the interior, Ulysses and Neoptolemos, a painting forming, as it were, the heroic catastrophe of the drama, where the victor renounces the glorious weapons and restores them generously to the son of Achilles, so that he in turn may wear them and accomplish the ruin of the Trojans ([Fig. 17]). Here, again, Douris’ favourite manner of composition results in a trilogy. We have the three acts in a tragedy, dominated by the memory of Achilles and the epic of the Trojan war.

The fact will at once be recalled that to the Greek theatre, as conceived by Æschylus and his immediate predecessors, a similar arrangement was not unknown. We find many such examples of about the time of the Persian wars, not only by Douris, but by his rivals as well.

To look here for an exact copy of some contemporaneous work would undoubtedly be absurd. We can hardly insist too strongly on this point. The absence of the costumes and accessories of the theatre, which were so individual and expressive in their conventions, is an indication that the painter did not try to depict on clay the living spectacle he had just witnessed. In a later age, the Greek vases of southern Italy freely transferred scenes from tragedies, but in this ancient period we have no such examples. The composition is derived from the theatre just as in the kylix of Eos and Memnon, mentioned above, it depends on Homer. It is a general impression that the mind of the artist has absorbed, and it helps him to arrange his subjects better.

Professor Carl Robert has very well remarked that the vases of the sixth century have the “epic” manner; they tell stories and relate to us in detail like the ancient singers. Those of the group of Douris have a “dramatic” manner; they habitually appeal to us by synthetic groupings, which we accurately term in the language of the theatre tableaux, and which sum up an entire scene. We would further remark that in Douris and his contemporaries, the figures assume attitudes which one might call “scenic.”

On one side of the painting of the Voting ([Fig. 16]), Ulysses, with uplifted hands, expresses at once astonishment and delight to see how the heap of little stones which represent the votes in his favour is growing; while, on the other side, in the right corner of the scene, Ajax, alone and deserted and feeling defeat inevitable, covers his head with his cloak to hide his disgrace, a dramatic figure, suggesting the often cited work of Timanthes—Agamemnon hiding his face so as not to witness the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia. We still could cite vases from the Louvre—beautiful examples—showing Achilles returning sad and in despair to his tent. What caused this beautiful and tragic inspiration? Who created these attitudes of mute eloquence if not the Greek drama? Do we not know that one of the great effects in the drama of Æschylus was precisely his placing on the stage an immovable Niobe, and a stern Achilles, who answered the messages of Agamemnon simply with unrelenting silence?