PLATE LXXXVI.
[Fig. 113]. HERAKLES AND ANTAIOS: FROM A KALYX-KRATER BY EUPHRONIOS.
From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.
vigorous lyre-player, whom we may identify with his favourite Epilykos, Skythes does almost too much in the rendering of the chest-muscles and makes the abdominal muscles seen in front view, and rendered in thinned varnish, press against them in an impossible way; Epiktetos, who is for a while disinclined for interior drawing, turns the breasts of his dancing women outwards, and in their space-filling movement reminds of old types. But the master of a Munich eye kylix has side-views of shields, and draws a kneeling leg in back view, so that the sole is visible and the calf almost disappears. Back views of the human body are given also in kylikes from the workshop of Kachrylion, which takes us over into the Leagros period just like the works of Phintias and Oltos, whom we already know. For Phintias soon outdoes the theft of the tripod of his early Deiniades kylix on a fine amphora at Corneto, and Oltos, the painter of the Pamphaios amphora and most of the Memnon kylikes, passes from the praise of Memnon to that of Leagros on the fine kylikes from Euxitheos’ workshop.
The Leagros period might be described as the culminating point of the dramatic tension prevailing in the older red-figured style. In it Phintias breaks the archaic fetters of his youth, Euthymides creates his decisive works, and we see the development of the great master Euphronios, whom Euthymides boasts to have beaten on the Priam amphora (Fig. [105]). All the three vases, which bear the signature of Euphronios as painter, praise the fair Leagros, i.e. the Munich Geryon kylix, which appeared in Kachrylion’s workshop, which, like the Leagros kylikes of Oltos, has under the exterior scenes a band of circumscribed palmettes in the colour of the ground, the Petrograd psykter with the hetairai (Fig. [112]) and the Paris calyx-krater with Herakles and Antaios (Fig. [113]).
The harmonious indoors scene of the psykter in its quite neat and sure drawing of the nude sets the finishing touch to the studies of Epiktetos (Fig. [111]), Oltos (Fig. [104]), and their contemporaries, and does the subject more justice than many pictures more advanced in perspective. The leg of the thirsty Palaisto disappearing in the background recurs in the Antaios scene, where the painter fully exhibits his anatomical knowledge, and shows as little regard for the concealing skin as other painters do for female drapery; the inner drawing is not even as usual put on in thinner colour. The composition of the scene is not very flexible. The struggle of the muscular but quite civilized Herakles with the rugged giant (whose right hand is a masterpiece of drawing) is the true theme, while the horrified women, who are almost old-fashioned in their drawing, serve like club, quiver and lion’s skin, only as filling for the triangular wrestling scheme, which was probably borrowed. A band of palmettes, and another of palmette and lotus in the red-figured style, vigorously frame the bold picture. The reverse of the Antaios krater shows the artist well on the way to represent correctly the course of the abdominal muscles from the chest to the pudenda, and thus to give a convincing expression to the old distortion of the body. Unfortunately we cannot further follow Euphronios on this path in the light of signed vases, for the ten kylikes with his name, which fill the gap between the youth of Leagros and that of his son Glaukon, were only signed by him as potter and some of them were demonstrably handed over to others to paint. That a progressive artist like Euphronios in this whole period never again took brush in hand, is more than improbable, and among the unsigned vases of the succeeding period his more mature works must be represented.
The kylix made in the workshop of Sosias (Fig. [114]) has been variously ascribed to Euphronios and to the painter