In Crete Phoenician metal objects have been found, which were imported during the Geometric period, and the Cretan Geometric pottery soon takes up motives of decoration borrowed from the Oriental or Orientalizing metal industry. The row of ‘S’s,’ which plays a part in Geometric bronzes, appears as we have seen on the Kavusi jug ([p. 27]). Its climax is the cable pattern (guilloche), which is obviously borrowed from Phoenician metal vessels (Fig. [26]). The tongue pattern (Fig. [ 25-27]) which surrounds the lower part and the shoulder of the vases, like the rays similarly used (Fig. [ 31-35]), goes back ultimately to Egyptian plant calyces. The connection with bronze patterns is fully proved by the dots often placed on the ornaments, by the technique of adding white on black painted vases (Fig. [29])
PLATE XIV.
[Fig. 27]. CRETAN MINIATURE JUG.
[Fig. 28]. THE FLIGHT FROM THE CAVE OF POLYPHEMUS, FROM A JUG FROM ÆGINA.
which aims at a metallic effect, and by the change of the vase shapes. These often get a quite non-ceramic appearance (Fig. [25]), and in their rounding and contouring, especially by the emphasis on the foot (Figs. [25] and [27]), they are in contrast with the Geometric forms. The Praisos jug (Fig. [26]) is obviously under Cypriot influence, as is the delicate Berlin jug (Fig. [27]), in which a previously described class ([p. 27]) reaches its high water mark. The Praisos pitcher (Fig. [25]) to the Orientalizing patterns enumerated already adds the hook spirals, which are characteristic of the 7th century, and the Berlin jug adds also the volute and the palmette. The plastic head which crowns this little bottle, and is entirely inspired by the Egypto-Phoenician ideas of form, inaugurates a new era in the representation of man. We are now in the time when Greek sculpture was born, in that notable period when Greek art under the influence of Oriental art took to the chisel, to enter on a century of development which ended in giving shape to the loftiest and most delicate creations that can move the spirit of man. It is noteworthy that Greek tradition embodied the beginnings of this development in a Cretan, Daedalus, and to a kinsman of this ancestor of all Greek sculptors it traced back the invention of the great art of painting, without the influence of which we cannot conceive of vase-paintings henceforward.
The first period of the transitional style betrays little of this influence. The reproduction of living beings is dominated by the decorative figures of the East, especially monsters and fabulous beings, which now make their entry into Greek art, and exercise a powerful attraction not only on plastic art, but on poetic and mythopœic fancy. Thus the Geometric silhouette is superseded. If even the preceding age had felt the need of leaving void a hole to indicate the eye, now the head is completely rendered by an outline and made lifelike by interior drawing (Fig. [30]). The next stage is that the whole body also is rendered in contour. To make the transition plain, we show here a vase-fragment, the Cretan origin of which is not established, but which must be in close connection with Cretan art, the Ram jug from Aegina (Fig. [28]). The animal frieze, with its hook spirals, dot rosettes, rhombi and triangles to fill the space, is characteristic of older Oriental art; the drawing of the rams is far beyond Geometric technique; in the body too the silhouette is given up, and indication of the hide is attempted. This animal frieze is no longer an end in itself: by the men clinging to them the ornamental rams become mythical rams, the rams of the Odyssey. The fugitives are not very closely connected with their saviours, and the giant must have been more than blind not to notice them. But on the other hand the artist has drawn them very clearly, has put both arms and both legs in view of the spectator, and even, where a small detail would not otherwise have shown well, made a small nick in the belly of the ram. This shows how the artist of the period could with difficulty do without a clear outline.