In Boeotia black-figured painting, alongside of primitive attempts to imitate Attic red-figured vases, continued as long in the burlesque parodies of myth of the so-called ‘Kabirion’ vases; black painting on a light ground is found in the early Hellenistic ‘Hadra vases’ made at Alexandria, and similar late phenomena occur in various localities. These late black-figured vases show real progress in nothing but the development of a loose freely moving vegetable ornamentation: but this progress depended on pure brush-technique, not on the old incised style.
PLATE LVII.
[Fig. 101]. ATTIC VASE, LATE BLACK-FIGURED STYLE.
[Fig. 102]. PANATHENAIC AMPHORA.
CHAPTER V.
THE RED-FIGURED STYLE IN THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
HOW the sudden change of technique took place, how the idea suggested itself, that instead of painting silhouettes on the ground of the clay, figures drawn in outline should be left free to contrast with the black background, is not yet explained. The inversion of the colour system is not new. From Ionic, Corinthian, Attic, and Boeotian workshops we know of light painting on a dark ground, and a plate from Thera has light figures in added paint and a black background. But this is entirely different from the red-figured style, which uses the ground of the clay for its figures. Only late Klazomenian sarcophagi can be regarded as its earlier stages, and it is quite possible that the new technique was naturalized in Athens by East Ionic painters.