its decorative effect for almost a century, appears here for the first time; the triangular scheme of two wrestlers seizing each other by the arms and pressing head against head, which survived to the time of Nikosthenes, was taken by the Amphiaraos krater (Fig. [66]) from the above-mentioned chest of Kypselos ([p. 67]); the nuptial procession of Peleus and Thetis which we shall meet on the lebes of Sophilos and the François-vase is prepared for in Corinthian vase-painting; and the battle-scenes, rider-friezes and chariot-races, of which there was a beginning in the Protocorinthian style, were most richly developed by the Corinthians, and adopted by Chalkis and Athens often without any essential improvement. Thus one may be sure, that a number of other types, which are not represented in the selection that accident has given us, started their victorious career from Corinth, and that the lost great art of Corinth, the bronze industry of which we have specimens and the richly-adorned chest of Kypselos described by Pausanias supplied to the vase-painters a number of mythological compositions, which influenced other manufactories. Unfortunately the greater part of this rich treasure is lost to us. The loss is the more to be lamented, as what we have shows us a fine inventive talent on the part of the Corinthian artists and a magnificently free and easy conception of life and legend. The Homeric poetry and the Epic inspired by it, the lays of Peleus and Herakles, the ballad poetry now becoming very fashionable, from which come e.g. the birth of Athena and probably also the Return of Hephaistos to Olympos, are reflected on these Corinthian vases in inimitably vivid and drastic fashion; and the vase-painter also gives scenes from daily life, carouses, drunken men who dance wildly with naked women, kitchen and winepress, riding and driving, marching out to battle, and the wild mellay itself. It is particularly on the kraters (Figs. 64-66) that we can trace how the accumulating material gets space on the vases; animal decoration, in which heraldic cocks are very popular, retires ever more to the reverse, under the handles, into the base stripe, and also by preference is replaced by lines of galloping riders, who form a lively decorative foil to the mythological principal picture (Fig. [64]). Meanwhile filling ornament disappears. The flying bird over the rider (Fig. [65]) renders the same service as the rosette, nay a better; it transplants the scene out of a decorative space into an actual one, the open country; and the space-filling animals of the Amphiaraos vase, which are traditional (p. [40]), are not intended merely any longer to enliven the vase surface but the wall of the house, the floor and the air. Thus the liberation of the field, for which Timonidas and his fellows paved the way, is attained. With this goes hand in hand the liberation of figure-drawing from ornamental constraint. The outspreading of the figure in the surface, which is still strong in the 7th century, is toned down or ingeniously given a motive, as with the kneeling warrior who fights backwards, and does not disguise his connection with the old runner with bent knee. The individualizing of men and animals carried forward by Timonidas now once more makes big advances in human figures, horses and dogs.
We will select two of the kraters to give us an idea of the development of the style. One, a Paris vase (Fig. [64]), gives a special application to a fine banqueting scene, by added names and the insertion of Iole, as the visit paid by Herakles to Eurytios, king of Oichalia. The fair daughter of the house stands with some indifference between the guest and her brother; it is supposed to represent a legend, but is really little more than a genre scene, as which it is hard to beat. The lively conversation of the guests, the dogs tied to the sofa-legs waiting and speculating on the chance of
PLATE XXXIII.
[Fig. 66]. DEPARTURE OF AMPHIARAOS: FROM A CORINTHIAN KRATER.
bits falling from the table are masterly, and even the horses in the supporting frieze, if out of proportion and inelegant, are the more characteristic and living. The technique follows old tradition; the flesh of Iole, tables and sofas, one dog, shields on the reverse, appear in outline drawing. Such contours, also found sometimes where men’s bodies left white set off those painted dark, unite to some extent, as does the red colouring of the male countenance, the vase in its effect with the great art.
On the other hand the Amphiaraos krater (Fig. [66]), which gives up red for male faces, and makes a point of covering the outline figures with a layer of white, has become more decorative and black-figured. Its pictures are not equal in execution to the invention, but come from excellent models ([p. 67]). Between the colonnade and façade of the house, which are in line like the tables in the Eurytios vase, the hero, because of his oath, mounts his chariot to go with open eyes to the death he forebodes; his angry look is directed to Eriphyle and the fatal necklace in her hand. With raised hands the family takes leave, a maid-servant gives the stirrup-cup to the charioteer. Foreboding evil, the faithful Halimedes sits on the ground: his heart has evidently bidden him to train up the boy Alkmaion to take vengeance on his mother. The whole delight in narration, which in the exaggerated rendering of the necklace strongly emphasizes the previous history, is as genuinely archaic, as the mythological individualizing of an old type ‘The warrior’s departure.’
The Amphiaraos krater is more developed than the Eurytios vase, not merely in technique. The painter of the later vase, though not so gifted as his colleague, draws more cleverly, and works with a set of types before him, as the frieze of riders shows. The advance becomes plain in the shape of the vase. The Eurytios krater encloses an almost uniformly swelling cauldron between a lip ring which is very low and a foot which spreads out in ample dimensions. From this round-bellied archaic shape we pass to a later more defined and elegant one in the Amphiaraos krater, which has a higher neck, a steeper and much less swelling body, with its lower part running to a point, till finally the outline almost resembles an inverted triangle and from the handles a rectangular or curved bridge has to be built leading to the high rim (krater à colonnette). The tendency to development, which we can read out of the vase shapes, may be taken as a symbol of the history of style. For a Greek vase was always something organic, as much so as a tree or animal.