Fig. 22. INTERIOR OF A SCHOOL.
By Douris. Berlin Museum.
The kylix in the Berlin Museum, The Interior of a School ([Fig. 22]), shows the same fault, although it may be considered as Douris’ masterpiece in everyday scenes. But the subject is of such interest to us, and throws so much light on the life of Greek scholars, that we think no longer of imperfections nor of the systematic stiffness of the groups. Here, again, Douris is seen as an original and fertile initiator. He here abandons the palæstra and the gymnastic exercises, repeated a hundred times, and takes us into the school-room where the music-master and the grammarian give their lessons; on one reverse, lessons on the lyre and recitations are given, on the other, lessons in writing and flute-playing. In the interior, a simple figure of a nude youth tying his sandal, shows the boy, whose task is finished, preparing to run and play. It is a charming and sober painting, we should call it to-day, “an instantaneous impression,” giving a glimpse of life which particularly attracts us. How were the youths of Athens educated? Upon that theme bulky volumes have been written.
As M. Paul Girard has shown in his Education Athénienne, this kylix of Douris teaches us better than the texts. We see here the importance the Greeks attached to musical instruction. The word “music” expressed the entire education; literary studies, instrumental music and singing. Music walked hand in hand with literature and gymnastic exercises. Plato even went so far as to say that the art of touching the soul with song inspired the desire for virtue. He rejected, however, as voluptuous and enervating, certain Ionian and Lydian modes. We must remember that music was intended chiefly, as represented on the vase in Berlin, to accompany the song, and that the words were more significant than the melody. Prayers, invocations, war-songs, moral maxims, all contributed to make music a powerful instrument of education, and the apparently paradoxical words of old Damon may in this way be explained, when he said that the rules of music could not be changed without shaking the state itself.
The kylix of Douris corresponds closely with these ideas. Literature is represented, on the one hand, by a master of declamation holding a written scroll, upon which we read the beginning of an epic poem that a pupil is about to recite ([Fig. 22]); on the other side, a young master is tracing a page of writing, while a pupil stands ready to copy it. Meanwhile the tutors of the boys sit on stools, waiting for the lessons to be finished to conduct them home. No other ancient artist has permitted us to enter so intimately into Athenian life. What we term “genre painting” has appeared. It is the last and perhaps the most fertile inspiration that Douris derived from great contemporary art. It permits us, at the same time, to admire the flexibility of a great talent, starting with religious and heroic subjects in the severe style of Eos and Memnon, and attaining to the graceful and brilliant compositions of The Youth and the Hare, and The Interior of a School.
There is an amusing sketch from the workshop of Euphronios, which may be placed by the side of these paintings, showing a writing-teacher bending forward in his chair, with forefinger raised and threatening, as if he were scolding the little fellows confided to his care ([Fig. 23]).
CONCLUSION
If we have succeeded in reproducing the rather complex physiognomy of Douris, we hope we have clearly indicated its two-fold character. His talent and his originality do not raise him above the conditions imposed upon his craft. It would be an error to ascribe genius to him. He owes his importance, on the one hand, to the disappearance of great paintings, and, on the other hand, to the innate qualities of the Greek race, which even invested popular works with freedom and beauty. Julius Lange, the Danish archæologist, has said that to judge Greek painting from the vases is like judging the light of the sun by the reflection we receive from the moon. But if, in this regard, industrial art is inferior to the lost masterpieces, let us not forget that it is nearer to the people, whose thoughts it so forcibly expresses. So the anonymous sculptors of images in our cathedral reveal to us the mediæval French soul far better than the great artists can.
