PLATE XIX.
[Fig. 38]. PROTOCORINTHIAN OR CORINTHIAN JUG.
[Fig. 39]. Fig. 40.
CORINTHIAN ALABASTRON AND ARYBALLOS.
painter employs them, it is true he puts at their disposal the chief frieze and often one at the base in addition, but he frames them with prominent stripes of ornament or animals, and side by side with the narrative vases purely decorative ones are still produced. The presence of several animal friezes on a single vase (e.g. on jugs of the shape of Fig. 35) is not uncommon; like band ornamentation in general, it is in contrast with the practice of the Geometric period ([p. 25]) and is probably to be traced to a strong influence of Oriental textile art. For the most severely shaped black vases, which are nearest to the bronze models that we possess (Fig. [38]), do not always adopt this fundamentally non-tectonic breaking up of the body of the vase.
The close connection of the shapes with metal-work has been already proved in the case of the cups of early Orientalizing style (Fig. [23]), and goes through the whole history of the fabric, and even where the models were not immediately copied, gave the vase-shapes a clearness and precision, with which the products of no other manufactory can compete; the Sicyonian-Corinthian school of repoussé work perhaps originated many metal vase-shapes, which were afterwards used in various manufactories. Though the Protocorinthian list of shapes is only known to a small extent, an important change can be established. Beside the jugs of primitive construction (cp. Fig. [33] with [54]) appear later more rounded vessels, the jug with ‘rotelle’ (Fig. [38]) and the wineskin-shaped, the chief example of which (Fig. [35]) with its excellently decorated bands, sometimes black, sometimes in the ground of the clay, shows us the style in a richer and more developed form than any other vase of this fabric. In the same way the little ‘lekythoi’ which are technically often quite exquisite, change their appearance, exchange their old globular shape (Fig. [27]) for a slimmer one with pronounced shoulder, which the caprice of the potter often furnishes with plastic additions, Argive transformations of Cretan ‘Daedalic’ types (Figs. [27] and [31]). And as beside the ‘rotelle’ jug, we have the wineskin-shaped jug, so beside this sort of ‘lekythos’ there is a wineskin-shaped variety with a rough tongue-pattern on the neck (Fig. [ 39]).