manner of the Altenburg amphora (Fig. [63]). The file principle, so potent in the East Ionic animal frieze, strongly asserts itself in the dancing maidens and the abandoned revellers: the oblique inclination forward, which the Klazomenian painter often gives the intoxicated, and which is very successfully preserved on an early Milesian relief in London, emphasizes at the same time the decorative arrangement, and increases the expressiveness, just as the eccentric movements of the dancers equally well fill the space and mark the tone. For life, sensual and everyday though often grotesque and brutal, is what these Ionian masters give, even if they are only decorative artists or artizans, whatever it may cost. So they succeed in nothing so well as women, satyrs and animals. The maidens with their receding foreheads, almond-shaped and often obliquely set eyes, and the little mouth somewhat drawn in below, and the well-marked back contour, have an attractiveness even on the most careless representations; the shaggy satyrs betray their equine nature not merely in ear, tail and hoof; the robust strong-maned horses, the female panthers with swelling breasts, the fighting cocks forgetting their heraldic duties, all show nature very close at hand.
The history of this style, which must approximately extend over the first half of the 6th century, can be to some extent followed. In the beginning comes the conflict of the old Ionic and Western techniques, the transition from the light slip to the reddish-yellow surface, and the tendencies in ornamentation which still strongly remind one of ‘Fikellura.’ The silhouette style makes liberal use of white. Not only with inherited aversion does it often replace incision by delicate lines of paint, provide garments with white crosses, animals with white spots and white belly-stripe, and ornaments with white details: in its earlier period it also extends the white surfaces, which it still places on the ground of the clay at times, from women and linen chitons to men, horses and dogs, and becomes as parallel to the Corinthian style with this contrast of colouring as with its wide-necked broad-bellied form of amphora.
The latest wares of the colony of Daphne (abandoned in 560 B.C.) show the transition to the rendering of folds of drapery, which takes the place of the old parti-coloured surfaces in the group of vases which took its rise about the middle of the century. In this later group, to which a series of ‘lebetes’ with topers, satyrs, centaurs, and battle scenes is an obvious introductory link, and which culminates in two amphorae at Munich (Figs. [76] and [78]) and one in Castle Ashby, there enters into the old style varied, free and easy, broadly even laxly rendered, a peculiar severity and discipline. The three chief specimens, necked amphorae with the continuous scene preferred by the East, are more defined and elastic in shape, more finished in shape and colour, more ornamental and elaborate in the rendering of the figures, than was the case with the earlier style. The conclusion which naturally suggests itself, that this new spirit came from the West and the Chalkidian-Attic region, is confirmed by the ornaments. Beside the Ionic looped and plaited bands, leaf and bud friezes, and the continuous tendrils (Fig. [ 76]), come the double rays, the Western palmette and lotus system; and when the painter scatters animals among the ornaments (Fig. [76]), he follows old Ionic tradition, but the hare and the hedgehog with the ostrich riders of the Castle Ashby amphora are of Corinthian origin (Fig. [66]). In the treatment of the figure, the meeting of Eastern vigour and Western severity makes as charming an effect as the genuinely Ionic and very decorative composition; the scene of a Munich amphora arranged round a centre (Fig. [77]) with the cunning Hermes, who creeping up on
PLATE XL.
[Fig. 77]. HERMES STEALS THE COW IO FROM THE GIANT ARGOS. FROM AN IONIC AMPHORA.
PLATE XLI.