[Fig. 87]. ATTIC TRIPOD-VASE.
are reflected in the Attic pottery. These reflections give a very varied air to Attic pottery, but on the other hand help to a dating of its separate phases. After a period of Corinthian influence follows one with a strong Chalkidian element, in the eye-kylikes the pattern of ‘Phineus’ ware is at work, while relations to East Ionic art run along side by side.
The group, which one is inclined to make parallel with the red-clay Corinthian, may be named the ‘Sophilos’ group from the fragments of a ‘lebes’ found on the Acropolis (Fig. [86]). In contrast with its immediate predecessor the Sophilos vase vies in motley effect with Corinthian ware. Ornament is richly painted; himatia and borders are picked out in colour, women and linen chitons have a white filling; in the red of the male face and the varied colouring of the horses the system of contrasted colours is as plainly exhibited as in the red colouring of the male breast or of the whole male body on other contemporary vases. The marriage of Peleus and Thetis is the subject, in a type repeated on the François vase (Fig. [90]), which we see developed on Corinthian kraters, probably under the influence of the chest of Kypselos. Who introduced into the scene the Muse in front view playing on the syrinx, cannot be stated; the lower part of the body in profile is in marked contrast with this bold front view; that it is of ornamental origin, perhaps from a double Siren, might be suggested without its being too venturesome.
The frieze is framed between a broad lotus and palmette pattern and a stripe with large animals. Whether the filling ornament has been omitted from the animal as well as from the figured frieze, in which nothing but the big lettering reminds us of the old requirement of filling the space, cannot be ascertained from this specimen; a second vase of the same painter shows between the animals, which still suggest the Vurvá style, isolated large rosettes, and other vases of this group make a palmette flower or bud with stalk project into the field. These isolated echoes of the old filling ornamentation, influenced by the East like the gradually appearing friezes of buds and leaves ([p. 83]) disappear about the middle of the century; but the animal friezes themselves live on longer.
This survival of old decorative tendencies in a new shape appears still more plainly in other vases of the “Sophilos” period. The amphorae, which leave a “metope” unpainted to carry their figures or make the figure field continuous, when they do not cover the whole body with stripes, have like the Klazomenian on the neck a head, a lotus and palmette cross, or a circle between zig-zags (the amphora which Dionysos is dragging on the François vase is of this type), and prefer still to decorate their stripes and fields with heraldically arranged animals. The Ionic liberties too, the meaningless compositions, are not infrequent, just as beside many Corinthian echoes in the friezes of animals and riders, Ionic patterns often assert themselves in the drawing and colouring of the animals, and in the shape and decoration of the vases. The kraters and hydriae which are parallel with the Corinthian, give the same impression. Of the smaller vases we may select two hasty compositions, which cannot compare with the fine work of Sophilos, but in their way help to enlarge our idea of the period. The Munich tripod-vase (Fig. [87]) in the stripe on the rim shows alongside of the old animal composition two wrestlers of the Corinthian scheme and a horse race from the same source, the succession of which is interrupted by a fallen horse just as the animal friezes of contemporary vases contain fighting animal groups; and a kantharos of Boeotian manufacture and shape (Fig. [88]) over the animal frieze introduces the wild dancers, who as at Corinth, Chalkis and in East Ionia prepare the way for the Satyrs.
PLATE XLVIII.
[Fig. 88]. BŒOTIAN KANTHAROS.