Douris and the Painters of Greek Vases

by Edmond Pottier

Hence it was in consequence of being in close connection with the export trade and with the two other great industries of wine and oil that the ceramic art of Athens developed so extraordinarily. The manufacturers must frequently have made large fortunes. Historians tell us that the great fortunes in Athens were in the hands of the metics. It is not astonishing to hear of rich offerings being made on the Acropolis by manufacturers, some of whom were potters. On the pedestal of an offering we read the name of the potter Euphronios. A votive stele, in a style of delicate archaism, represents in bas-relief a manufacturer of vases seated, holding two drinking cups in one hand. Unfortunately a great part of the inscription is effaced, but one can still distinguish the end of a name “IOS” which might be Euphronios. The style of the sculpture and the accepted date of the ceramist would agree.

The most beautiful archaic statue found on the Acropolis is signed by one of the greatest sculptors of the fourth century, Antenor, and bears a dedication made by a certain Nearchos, who might be a maker of black-figured vases—one of which is preserved. This identification is unfortunately not certain, but is admitted by several archæologists, and implies nothing improbable. If one could definitely prove that the potter Nearchos had ordered, of a famous sculptor, an important work for an offering to the goddess Athene as a tithe of his gains, we should possess most important evidence as to the social and pecuniary condition of craftsmen.

Another curious record of the mode of life led by certain potters is given on a vase in the Museum at Brussels. A painter has painted his own portrait in the features of a young man at a banquet leaning on a couch, feasting in the gay company of friends and hetairai ([Fig. 3]). He is a contemporary of Douris named Smikros. One day, his purse being well filled in consequence of good orders, he and some companions of the studio indulged in the pleasures the city yielded.

If, by such information we may consider the pecuniary position of potters as fairly good, shall we conclude that their education was equal to that of the best Athenian society? Here it may be well to enter a protest against the commonly accepted opinion. Vase painters are usually credited with qualities of originality amounting to positive genius. The merit of the composition and of the choice of subject, the skill in placing the figures, the invention of attitude and movement, are all attributed to them. Hartwig, an author who has closely studied the Greek drinking cups of the fifth century, goes so far in his admiration as to reject as fanciful any connection between the works of this industry and the great works of contemporary art. He grants that vase painters copy one another, and that they borrow mutually subjects for designs and even persons. But he maintains that their province remains indisputedly theirs, and one need not look for copies from celebrated works in their art.

This opinion appears, like many others, to contain a truth and an error. It is quite true, that to look for a commonplace reproduction of great art upon painted vases would be useless. Many subjects are strictly designed for the express purpose of the vase, for the form of its surface, and are drawn from scenes of everyday life which were constantly under the draughtsman’s eyes, scenes of the palæstra, of banquets, military armaments, processions of cavalry, etc. Who could imagine a Greek draughtsman not copying Nature?

But, on the other hand, how can one think of an artisan as skilled as an Athenian ceramist, who could remain indifferent to the lessons of the great masters? Would not his eyes and brain be filled with the works of art which made all public buildings and sanctuaries museums in the open air? And in that case, what strange rule would forbid him to borrow many of the subjects and persons from these superior models? These would be abstracts, free compositions, adaptations, but nevertheless a borrowing.

Fig. 6. YOUTHS EXERCISING IN THE PALÆSTRA.

Kylix by Douris. Louvre Museum.

Furthermore, what we have just said of vase manufacturers places them in a popular class whose members did not shine by education. Merchants of free status, metics, freedmen or slaves could not form a society comparable to the one in which lived a Polygnotos or a Phidias. Isocrates says scornfully: “Who would dare compare Phidias to a maker of terracottas, or Zeuxis and Parrhasios to a painter of votive offerings?” He would undoubtedly have said the same of vase painters. We affirm, in fact, that many of these workers were quite illiterate; some were content simply to trace sham letters or letters in juxtaposition, without any meaning, in the place of the usual inscription. Many made gross mistakes, or mixed the dialect of their own country with that of Athens. Some did not even know how to spell the name of the potter for whom they were working, but wrote it in three or four different ways. These little facts help to illustrate the inferior condition of this society. To look here for great artists, philosophers or thinkers, rivals of Pindar and Æschylus, of Phidias and Polygnotos, would be contrary to all likelihood. If Euphronios, Douris or Brygos had genius, it was entirely in their province as skilled draughtsmen, guided and influenced by beautiful models, besides being business men and prudent merchants. The idea of raising such men to the height of creators and inventors would certainly have greatly astonished the Athenians.