PLATE XCII.
[Fig. 153]. THE GIANT TALOS OVERCOME BY THE DIOSKUROI: RED-FIGURED VOLUTE-KRATER.
the Eleusinian deities, and decorated other vases also in this manner. These scenes, on which the figures move less vigorously than the lines, are more successfully rendered than the pathos of the scene of abduction on the London hydria signed by the potter Meidias. He was no bold progressive artist; his technically exquisite and very delicately drawn pictures recast in new shapes the new phenomena of art: in him the series of masters of the type of the ‘Sotades’ painter and the Eretria master comes to an end.
His contemporary, who may after the chief figure of the Satyric play vase at Naples be called the ‘Pronomos’ master, likes figures of ‘existence’ in pretty poses, but he draws them with more spirit and does more justice to the vehement style of his time. On the Naples vase, a showy volute-krater with rich profiling, he puts on the obverse the cast of an Attic theatrical performance in two almost equal rows one above the other, and thus starts a principle of composition which was taken up by the vase-painting of Lower Italy (Fig. [158]). Liberal use is made of thinned colour, the centre of the scene is denoted by a white figure, the luxuriantly ornamented dresses confuse the general impression. In respect of shape and decoration one may speak of a decay of the finer tectonic sense, which reminds us surprisingly of the vases of Lower Italy. The perspective side-view of the footstool and of the tripod column are liberties taken by the great art, which generally Attic vase-painters consciously avoid so as to keep to the surface treatment.
The tripod-column, which transplants us into the Theatre of Athens, as the Athena of the Panathenaic vases to the Acropolis, recurs after Polygnotan times often in the midst of mythological scenes, and brings the vases, which show it, anyhow in relation to dramatic exhibitions.
It has been proposed to recognise the effect of the stage on vase-painting, e.g. in the increased pomp of the dresses. This effect might at the most have taken place indirectly; for that the vase-painters often took as their patterns votive paintings of victorious Choregi, is more than probable. And in general one may draw conclusions as to the great art from many a fine invention, which is seen on vase-paintings at second-hand, e.g. from the Bacchic scenes on the reverse of the ‘Pronomos’ vase. This conclusion is certainly also justified in view of the Talos vase (Fig. [153]) which transforms the mighty echoes of the late Pheidian art into the pompous, as the Meidias vases into the ornamental-elegant. The vase-shape is closely allied to that of the ‘Pronomos’: the central figure in white, so popular in this period, recurs, and in its spatial effect is enhanced by shaded modelling far above the proportions of the other figures, which show plainly the conscious restraint of the vase-painters. Though the ‘Talos’ master altered the composition of his pattern to suit his vase, he must have preserved with tolerable faithfulness the grandiose invention of the centre group; the passionate impetus, which fills the whole scene and catches even the cloaked figures of the reverse, is here most convincing.
With this fine masterpiece, which almost exaggerates the element of show, not separated by more than two decades from the Parthenon pediment, we close the history of the vases that show the style of Pheidias. Nay, one may regard the proper history of Greek vase-painting as closed with these post-Pheidian vases. Not merely does the potter make his vases untectonic by excessive profiling and elaborate extension, but the painter too, interrupts the unity of the vase-surface with the white-painted and plastically modelled central figure; thus in a sense the silhouette style is declared bankrupt.
