PLATE XLIX.
KRATER BY KLITIAS AND ERGOTIMOS: “THE FRANÇOIS VASE.”
From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.
François vase themselves in their later works go over to the new system, which paints a ground for the white and gives up red in the male body, a system which, perhaps, other less thorough artists had already set going.
The chariot-race for a prize on the neck of the François vase introduces us to an old and popular contest, which according to tradition Pisistratus replaced by other games, when in 566 B.C. he reformed the Panathenaea. At the same time he must have erected a new image of Athena on the Acropolis, which, in opposition to the old conception, ([p. 66]) still followed by the François vase, represented the goddess in full armour. For on the prize vases, which were given to the victors full of precious oil and labelled ‘one of the prizes from the city of Athens’ (τῶν Άθήνηθεν ἄθλων), Athena always appears as a fighting warrior, just as the poet Stesichoros and paintings of the time of Sophilos had made her leap from the head of Zeus. The oldest of these Panathenaic amphorae (an idea of their shape is given by Fig. 101, a later specimen of about 520 B.C.) shows on the obverse the new type of Athena in the making, and on the reverse the chariot-race which was now becoming infrequent. Since this vase adheres closely to the Sophilos group in style and especially in the animal decoration of the neck, but on the other hand already has a painted ground for white, it will not be possible to move the François vase and the transition to the later technique away from the sixties of the 6th century.
The group of kraters, lebetes, hydriae, amphorae and other vases, which immediately adheres to the François vase, usually, in so far as it is not interrupted by marked individualities, is described by the antiquated name ‘Tyrrhenian,’ derived from the finds in Etruria. The conservative and often mechanical character of these vases does not conceal the progressive elements. The vases assume the more slender egg-shaped form known to us from Chalkis, the old neck ornament of the amphorae ([p. 96]) is replaced by lotus and palmette. White colour is regularly placed on black ground; Herakles is often equipped with the lion’s skin; Athena with at any rate helmet and spear; in place of the old-fashioned burlesque dancers and naked women come Satyrs and Maenads. But of improvements in observation of nature this second-class group has hardly any to show. It lives on the achievements of great masters, on Corinthian traditions, and eastern influences. The frieze amphorae, which continue alongside of the amphorae with picture field, vie with the François vase in the accumulation of figured friezes; only in the lower stripe they economize in figure scenes by using lines of lotus and palmettes and animals. Thus their general appearance is still very like the Vurvá vases, the Gorgon lebes and many vases of the Sophilos period. The traditions of the 7th century end in this mechanical group; the great masters of the second third of the century bring, perhaps from Chalkis, new vase types and new kinds of decoration.
The transition may first be followed in the Kylix, which happily can be traced in its development by many signed specimens. The firm of Ergotimos produces a cup with knobbed handles and no set-off for the rim, the interior picture of which is framed by tongue pattern, thus a kylix of the type known to us from Corinth and Chalkis; on the outside the Satyr is still loosely connected with drinkers of the old type, and has thus not yet been associated with Dionysos and the Maenads. This type of kylix shews marked Chalkidian influence, especially in later specimens like that of Boston (Fig. [92]), on which Circe (painted white over black) hands to the companions of Odysseus the fatal potion and so brings about her own abrupt end. Series of branches and buds, probably also the dog in front view ([p. 81])