But at the same time the memory of monochromy is not yet quite extinct; the head silhouette is still by preference painted red. When often instead of it the breast and thigh are picked out in red, when in sphinx and siren contour drawing is abandoned, the connection with the animal-frieze style is complete, and the new intrusion of a strong decorative element in this pottery is obvious.
Even the compositions of the figured scenes are under this decorative spell, which, as in the Protocorinthian style, is only broken through by a few gifted masters. The duel flanked by sirens on the Boston cup (Fig. [ 43]) is typical of the older Corinthian style. The warriors and riders are often arranged in processions, collected in big battle-scenes; the grotesque revellers and dancers with extended posterior, prototypes of the satyrs, fill whole friezes with their reckless antics; the girls take hands for the dance. Special legendary scenes are, however, very rare, and when vase-painters like Chares supply names to an ordinary series of riders, this makes clear rather than removes the defect.
This defect to be sure is due to a great extent to the accidental preservation of a series of vases, which are for the most part careless decorative work intended for the export trade, so that we may form erroneous ideas. The neighbourhood of Corinth itself has supplied some fine specimens with a marked character of their own, which bridge the gap between the Chigi vase and later Corinthian vase-painting (Fig. [ 64-67]), e.g. kylikes where, in the interior field framed by tongue pattern ornament, are fine Gorgon masks and human busts, and especially two works signed by the painter Timonidas. The flask with the story of Troilos (Fig. [44]) shares with the Chigi vase the contrast of colour important for Corinthian painting. The flesh of the women is light as a set-off to that of the men, the chiton of the man sets off his nude parts, the shield its bearer, the front horse the hinder of the pair. The delight in the landscape element, the fine steeds, and big inscriptions, points back to Protocorinthian style. But nothing is left of the ornaments scattered about the field but a small palmette, the composition has become looser, there is much less tendency to cover the surface in the drawing of the figures: the old scheme of the kneeling runner has its echo in the Achilles lurking in ambush, but it is ingeniously adapted to new use. Thus there is a much freer relation to space, which gives the necessary foundation for the descriptive style. The hunter too, whose outline Timonidas has put on a clay votive tablet unconstrained by the silhouette technique or by the desire for contrast of colour (Fig. [45]), is not crowded by any filling ornaments; the finely drawn youth in the balance of his proportions and the rendering of detail surpasses the wrestler of the Praisos plate (Fig. [29]), and in his broad massive appearance introduces a new rendering of the body. And similarly the dog, coloured bright yellow with appropriate detail, goes far beyond the animal frieze style. One fancies that in this animal eagerly looking up to his master one sees expressed something like feeling.
Like the pinax of Timonidas many other votive tablets of the same find take one out of the stock vase scenes, especially in the delight in landscape, the trees conceived of in their special natures, the cross-section like genre scenes from the workshop of the potter and metal-worker, from mining and sea voyages. The vases, however, show little of those progresses in colouring and spacing, which we must assume in greater measure for the great art of painting. The decisive step in the history of vase painting, which is especially embodied for us by the painter Timonidas, consists in the liberation of the field, in the transition from the ornamental to the pictorial style, in the abandonment of filling ornamentation, which only survives in vegetable
PLATE XXII.
[Fig. 45]. HUNTER AND HOUND. PINAX FROM CORINTH, SIGNED BY TIMONIDAS.
[Fig. 46]. FRIEZE OF AN EARLY PHALERON JUG.