[Fig. 78]. CENTAURS HUNTING: FROM THE SAME AMPHORA AS FIG. 77.
tip-toe steals away the fair cow Io from the sleeping giant Argos, and the picture of the Centaurs hunting on the reverse (Fig. [78]) are full of ornamental vigour and at the same time full of fresh observation. The left hand of the giant shows a new study of nature compared with the old-fashioned right of Hermes and left of the front Centaur; in the giant the artist is struggling to represent the anatomy, and the mantle of Hermes plainly falls in layers, in contrast with the absence of folds in the chiton.
The new impetus, which even expressed itself in exportation to Italy, could not save the Klazomenian manufactory from the preponderance of its Attic rival; it is at the same time its end. Not that the East Ionic decorative tendencies formed a blind alley; the combination with western technique ensured its continued life. But Asia Minor, which at this time fell into the hands of the Persians, was not a suitable soil for continued production. Athens seized not only the exportation but the entire production. The arrival at Athens of East Ionic artists is reflected not merely in the names of the vase-painters. When on the jug of Kolchos and the Attic vases, typical Eastern principles of composition crop up, when Nikosthenes introduces an East Ionic shape of amphora (Fig. [104]), when the red-figured technique coming into existence on Klazomenian sarcophagi conquers the Attic workshops, when on early red-figure kylikes the same decorative tendencies which prevailed in the East assert themselves, there can be no question of an extinction of East Ionic art, but only of a re-birth in Athens, and a baptism with Attic spirit.
About on a level with the Castle Ashby group is another East Ionic class, also only known through export to Italy, the ‘Caeretan hydriae,’ so-called from the place where they were mostly found (amphorae and kraters being also represented), which are usually attributed to South East Ionia. The developed vase-shapes, the completed black figure technique, which has a wash under the white and uses incision freely even for outlines, and the decoration, which has got beyond the animal style, make their late origin certain, and the agreement with Ephesian sculpture of about 550 B.C., expressed in treatment of hair, converging mantle folds and the graded edges of the drapery, clinches the matter. When in spite of that these vases stick fast to the system of contrast in colour, that agrees with an expressed preference for gay decoration such as from the days of the Naukratis vases South East Ionia loved. The ‘Caeretan’ painter actually enhances this colour preference, in that he varies the colour of the male body from black to dark red, bright yellow and white and similarly alternates the colour of hair and clothes. He gives the same motley effect to the ornamentation, which shows plainly its descent from the old Rhodian in its broad lotus and palmette system, its rosettes, hook-crosses, and spiral-crosses ornamenting the neck, and also reveals East Ionic freedom in natural myrtle branches and ivy-tendrils, in bucrania with festoons and in interspersed animals. The animal world too, with its fallow deer, lions, griffins, winged horses, and winged bulls, is characteristic of the East and the neighbourhood of Asia. These animals have long ceased to play their heraldic part, though on the reverse of the vase two may face each other in symmetrical correspondence; they are rather by choice included in hunting scenes. The traditional tendency finds a refuge, if anywhere, in the figure scenes. In heraldic scenes of battle, in the horse-taming ‘runner with bent knee,’ in Satyr and Nymph running to meet each other, it asserts itself: but the living interest makes one forget the ornamental scheme. Lively drastic description is the strong point of the ‘Caeretan’ painter. His broadly treated scenes of hunting, fighting, and wrestling, the fine delineations
PLATE XLII.
[Fig. 79]. HERAKLES SLAYS BUSIRIS AND HIS FOLLOWERS: FROM A CÆRETAN HYDRIA.
From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.