background, they prepare a step, which is completed in the Nessos group, i.e., the taking over of the animal-frieze technique into figure-painting, with which vase-painting parts company again from the great art and returns to decorative silhouette effect. In Attica, too, the circular rendering of the eye is taken over for the male figure, the flesh-tone of the face is retained for decorative effect, women are distinguished by the old outline-drawing, decorative female creatures and monsters do not escape from the silhouette treatment (Fig. [48]).
On vases of this technique the Orientalizing luxuriance developed out of Geometric richness is entered by a new spirit of severity and discipline, which one would be most inclined to explain by strong influence of Protocorinthian art. The field ornaments are similarly limited, and the rosette with points has the chief place; the lotus and palmette pattern of the Nessos vase (Fig. [48]), the cable and the double rays of the Piraeus amphora (Fig. [49]) are simple borrowings, the lion-type on the vase just named is closely connected with the Protocorinthian. One may ask whether the types in spite of their Attic stamp do not partly come from the Sicyonian-Corinthian school. The procession of chariots in the Piraeus amphora is only in the line of old tradition, but on the neck of the Nessos vase the Phaleron type is replaced by another, which is certainly only an extract from a larger composition, and the same artist makes the sisters of Medusa furiously pursue a Perseus not represented at all, whom the Aegina bowl of kindred style and the rather later cauldron in the Louvre show along with his protectors Athena and Hermes. At any rate the vase-painters had no hesitation in taking over the compositions once created and cutting them up, enlarging or abbreviating them according to their requirements, intensifying or weakening them according to their talents. The same lucky ‘laziness of invention’ is shown in the rendering of the individual figure. Old types of Oriental art are behind the battle motive of Herakles, the flight of the Gorgons, and the race of the Harpies on the Aegina bowl; the unusual front view points to the origin of the Gorgon type as an ornament. But the Greek showed originality in animating and enhancing these types. In spite of the harsh perspective it is arrestingly expressive when the Medusa collapses in death, the sisters rush with the speed of lightning through the air, Herakles kicks the back of the rough monster, and the victim supplicates his tormentor by touching his beard: we have an art with the joy of youth full of vigour and possibilities of development displaying itself, the same early Attic art, which next found plastic expression in the early sculptures of the Acropolis. On the Nessos amphora the decorative figures are of secondary importance. The mouth bears the old goose frieze, the broad handles are adorned with owls and swans: under the principal field a row of dolphins gambol, but they are hardly to be conceived of as a meaningless animal frieze, but are to be understood in a ‘landscape’ sense; the wild chase is by sea. On the other vases of this group the animal frieze element is much stronger, on some it entirely prevails, e.g., on big-bellied amphorae with no angle dividing body from neck, and a bason from Vurvá, which both reduce the filling ornaments very considerably. These vases lead over to a noticeably miscellaneous class, the so-called Vurvá style, which just like the older Corinthian denotes a strengthening of the decorative and is also to be regarded as a rival of Corinth. The ornamentation is very limited, for filling there is nothing but rosettes, which may also form independent friezes: the decoration assumes quite similar forms to those of the Corinthian fabric. But the Corinthian elements do not entirely give its character to the Vurvá style. Apart
PLATE XXIV.
[Fig. 49]. ATTIC AMPHORA.
[Fig. 50]. CYCLADIC (EUBOIC) AMPHORA.