PLATE XIII.
[Fig. 24]. ATTIC GEOMETRIC KYLIX.
Figs. 25 & 26. CRETAN JUGS IN THE FIRST ORIENTALISED STYLE.
CHAPTER III.
THE SEVENTH CENTURY
AS the Oriental motives pour into the Greek world, a new development begins, which in the details of its course is still hard to grasp, the collision of the native Geometric style with Oriental influence, the fusion of both elements into a new unity, and the growth of the archaic style. In contrast with the quiet and consistent unfolding of Geometric style, the process to anyone who goes deep into its details takes on the character of a restless fermentation, and an almost dramatic tension. It occupies, roughly speaking, the 7th century. Without forgetting how arbitrary divisions in the history of Art must always be, let us here treat as one the period from the end of the Geometric style to the abandonment of filling ornament, the change in technique of clay and colouring, and the formation of the established body of black-figured types.
The smelting process took on a different character in the different regions, according to the tenacity with which the old style was retained, and the intensity of the contact with the East. In most places there follows first a period of hesitation and experimentalism, out of which finally the new style is formed. Nowhere does the Oriental element simply take the place of the Greek Geometric; the acquisitions of the old style, the fixed vase shapes, the principles of decoration, and the technique, remain and are further developed. Greek pottery was much too highly and richly developed, too firmly rooted, to find it necessary to imitate Oriental clay vases. The stimuli were of much more general nature; they are chiefly visible in the ornamentation and pictorial types, they are taken from metal vases and richly embroidered materials, from costly carpets, articles of jewellery, engraved gems, and other fine things, which the foreign trader or the seafaring Greek brought from the Near or Far East or saw with his own eyes abroad. It became apparent to him, that the Geometric style was really poverty-stricken and mathematical. The feeling for finely-drawn line and vivid reproduction of life awoke in view of the freer Art of the East; the Greek made the Oriental models his own and created out of them and the mathematical element a new Art. Not all stimuli come direct from the East; perhaps only comparatively few, which were then passed on, were constantly altered and took on varied local colour. It looks as if the stream of Oriental influence took two different routes, one by way of the Greek East (Rhodes, Samos, Miletus) and another by way of Crete, which evidently had a strong influence on the Cyclades and Peloponnesus.