Fig. 19. SOLDIERS ARMING.
By Douris. Vienna Museum.
The style of this kylix is ancient, and it dates from the earliest period in the career of Douris. Although found at the same time and in the same place as the other kylix at Vienna ([Fig. 16]), representing The Contest of Ajax and Ulysses, although signed by the same painter and moulded by the same potter Python, it represents an entirely different manner. Here is a style still archaic, the heads large, the bodies rather thickset, the draperies with regular and symmetrical lines, an extreme minuteness in all details. There, the proportions are reversed, the bodies lengthened, with small heads, the garments with wavy folds, the entire execution freer and with less care for detail. No one would think of attributing the two vases to the same master if they did not bear the name of Douris. This comparison permits us to appreciate the nature of the changes that took place in a Greek potter’s career. He is not a craftsman who is satisfied to remain in the routine of a uniform method. He is an artist who wishes to learn, who reflects and develops. Herr Hartwig has well demonstrated that there was a “first” as well as a “second” style in Douris, as in our days in Corot or Fantin-Latour.
To introduce glorious memories of the Persian invasion, only recently repulsed by the Greeks, was another mode of rejuvenating the warrior subjects. These direct allusions to the Persian wars, are, to our great surprise, only rarely found on the monuments. It is a characteristic trait of the idealism in which the art of the fifth century delights. Anything in the form of anecdote or accident, all that forms the woof of material facts, is only of slight interest to it. It fears also to provoke the gods by extolling the grandeur of Athens, and hence allegory and symbol are used in preference. The Treasury of the Athenians, raised at Delphi from a tithe of the spoils of Marathon, glorified the deeds of Herakles and Theseus. The pediments of the Temple at Ægina, probably made after Salamis, show the Trojans conquered by Homeric heroes. To celebrate Greece’s second victory over Asia, images of the Trojan horse were placed on the Acropolis and on the slopes of Delphi. Industrial painting conforms to the same principles. Warrior subjects were frequently represented by battle-scenes between Greeks and Asiatics, but appear only to contain allusions to the Epic, or else to the battle of Herakles with the Amazons ([Fig. 1]), which recalls the great deeds of the Greeks’ ancestors against barbarians.
Fig. 20. GREEK HOPLITE AND PERSIAN STANDARD BEARER.
By Douris. Louvre Museum.
We may say that Douris gave proof of originality by frankly dealing with modern subjects. A kylix at the Louvre, unfortunately damaged and restored, shows in the interior an hoplite striking with his sword a fallen barbarian soldier, who holds a standard with two square-shaped flags ([Fig. 20]). This typical accessory leaves no doubt as to the meaning of the painting. A banner would never be placed in the hands of a Trojan. It is very probable that the victors of Marathon picked up Persian standards on the battlefield with the spoils, and that we have here the reproduction of such a trophy. We look upon this sketch of Douris as a precious record of the army led by Datis and Artaphernes in 490. For the vase is not of a style to be dated after 480, that is to say, after the second invasion conducted by Xerxes in person.
Other vases attributed to the painter Onesimos represent battles of Greeks against Asiatics on horseback, very realistic in form. Here one may again see copies from life. Lastly, Greeks and Persians are fighting on the sculptured frieze which adorns one side of the small temple of Nike Apteros on the Acropolis. These, however, are rare allusions to the greatest military achievements of the century. It is not difficult to imagine what they would have produced in modern art. We must, however, beware of crediting Douris with an exaggerated initiative, and we must not forget that among the lost works of Greek art, a painting by Mandrocles is mentioned, dating from Darius’ expedition into Scythia, The Crossing of the Bosphorus, and at Athens a Battle of Marathon, attributed to Panainos, in which Miltiades and the chief Greek generals were seen repulsing the Asiatic phalanxes. Douris and Onesimos did not lack models to guide them into this channel. The value of their works is above all in the good fortune which has preserved them to us, and gives us, if not the letter, at least the spirit of the painting dedicated to contemporary history.