PLATE LXVII.
[Fig. 114]. ACHILLES AND PATROKLOS: FROM A KYLIX WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER SOSIAS.
PLATE LXVIII.
[Fig. 115]. BOY CHASING A HARE: RED-FIGURED KYLIX.
Peithinos: the remarkable work of art must rather belong to an unknown third person (the ‘Sosias’ painter). The composition filling the space suggests the old style, especially the pressing of the foot against the rim: but the boldly fore-shortened right leg of Patroklos with the foot viewed from above, known also to Euthymides and to Phintias in his maturity, the full development of the bunches of drapery and the swallow-tail edges, and above all the extremely bold attempt to open the corner of the eye, lead us into the critical phase of the archaic red-figured painting, the Leagros period. Only an intense study of the model could lead this master so far from the beaten track; that with the added names of Achilles and Patroklos he came into conflict with the Iliad, mattered little to him. Furthermore on the Sosias vase a technical innovation comes seriously into play, which is gradually adopted by Euphronios (Fig. [112]), Euthymides (Fig. [107]), Phintias and Hypsis (Fig. [106]); the outline of the hair is no longer separated from the black ground by the old hard incised line, but by a narrow line of the colour of the ground. Within the kylikes, which praise the fair Leagros, a change takes place in the framing of the interior picture; in place of the ring in the colour of the clay, of which occasionally they attempt to increase the effect by doubling, comes the maeander in different varieties, first simple and continuous (Frontispiece and Figs. 108, 115, 126), then ever more frequently in broken up shape (Fig. [116]). The new frame comes e.g. on the London kylix, which by the hare-hunt gives such a natural motive for the space-filling movements of the running Leagros (Fig. [115]). The Leagros of the kylix agrees so exactly with that of the Antaios krater, that one may ascribe this advance to Euphronios; for the line of the ground giving the hair outline and the organic connection of chest and belly are beyond the stage of the krater in question.
A further step forward on the part of the same master may probably be seen in the Boston kylix, which praises both Leagros and Athenodotos (Fig. [108]). Never perhaps was the inmost nature of the satyr so fully caught as in this fine example: he is squatting on the emptied pointed amphora and positively breathing out an aroma of wine and wantonness. His lifelike picture goes far beyond the Antaios krater, and a closely connected Athenodotos kylix in Athens actually carries this vivacity into the same subject, the wrestle of Herakles and Antaios.