PLATE LXXII.
[Fig. 120]. SKYPHOS WITH THE RANSOMING OF HECTOR.
[Fig. 121]. THESEUS DESERTS THE SLEEPING ARIADNE (?): FROM THE EXTERIOR OF A KYLIX.
fine picture full of life: Achilles has placed under the table the dead body of Hector, which he daily drags round the walls of Troy, is reclining at his meal, and talking to his charming cup-bearer, as if he did not hear the appeal of the old Priam for his son’s corpse and did not see the presents brought in by the attendants. The clear dramatic disposition is as much in the manner of the master as the free pose of the cup-bearer with weight on one leg, and the delicate psychological animation of the countenances. The kylix in Corneto (Fig. [121]), the outside of which has been interpreted as the secret departure of Theseus from the sleeping Ariadne, is at least closely related to the works of the ‘Brygos’ painter. In the workshop of Euphronios the youthful Duris must also have been a pupil. For his earliest work, the Vienna kylix, with an arming scene, painted for the potter Python, is quite under the influence of the Panaitios master, and can only be recognized as the work of a painter of another tendency by the greater elegance and slimness of the figures, and the more schematic composition.
In the kylikes with the names of Panaitios and Chairestratos, it can still be traced to some extent, how out of the docile imitator of the Panaitios master comes the real Duris, the routine draughtsman, who puts down his elegant figures with almost academic objectivity and who cares more for the uniform decorative effect of his neat silhouettes than for complicated compositions of life. The pair of Berlin kylikes, perhaps made by Kleophrades, and the kantharos, on which Duris signs as potter and painter, show as plainly as possible this gradual realization of independence, and also pass more and more, though not finally, from the artificial fold packets of the chiton to a uniform system of wavy lines. How entirely Duris altered his style even during the Chairestratos period, is shown e.g. by the Vienna kylix, painted for Python with the contest for the Arms of Achilles, which not merely in its more elegant shape, but also in drawing and the relation of the figures to the space, is widely distant from the arming scene on a kylix of the same workshop. The fine Eos kylix in the Louvre, which Duris painted for the potter Kalliades and dedicated to Hermogenes, the London Theseus kylix, and probably also the fine London psykter with the love-name Aristagoras (Fig. [122]) belong to this period. The satyrs of this psykter, who instead of joining in procession play all kinds of unprofitable tricks behind the back of the leader of the chorus, need only be compared with their fellows on the Boston kylix, and one can recognize at once the routine hand and slighter artistic endowment of the master, but also the more elegant and easy draughtsmanship of the later time.
In the later period of the artist (about 480 B.C.) we must put along with their congeners the kylikes with the love-name Hippodamas, the finest of which is the Berlin school vase (Fig. [124]). In the drapery of the teachers and pupils, who are here assembled in the class-room, nothing of archaic stiffness remains. If even the Leagros period had made the cloak folds come to a natural end, they now bend round their ends and pave the way for the “drapery eyes,” which in the next period so naturally characterize the packings in the material.