At Athens this polychrome decoration was not indeed limited to the lekythi, but was extended to the kylix, the pyxis, and other forms, of which some beautiful examples exist in the British Museum and at Athens.[[799]] In these, as in the best of the lekythi, the drawing of Greek artists seems almost to have reached perfection, and arouses our wonder yet more when we reflect that everything was done merely by freehand strokes of the brush. This technique is practically limited to the period 480–350 B.C.
The subsidiary ornamentation of the lekythi was put on either after the main design or before, this being immaterial. The lines above the design can be seen to have been painted on the wheel, as they go all round the vase; but the palmettes on the shoulder and maeander patterns above the design do not extend beyond it. After the colouring the vases appear to have been fired again, and in some cases the white slip was probably varnished. The details of their manufacture show that the lekythi were not intended for daily use; the shape is awkward for handling—the handles, for instance, are obviously not intended for practical use—and the delicate, lightly baked slip made them too porous for liquids. Everything tends in the direction of elegance and delicacy.
Our next sub-division consists of vases, chiefly of late date, in which the decoration is by means of opaque colours laid on the surface of a vase altogether coated with black varnish or glaze. The process is not indeed one absolutely unknown in earlier times, for there is the primitive Kamaraes ware of Crete (p. [266]), and also a small series of archaic vases belonging to the early part of the fifth century (p. [393]) in which this principle is adhered to, the designs being painted in opaque red or white on the black varnish. The latter seem to show a development from the black-figure period, to the end of which they belong, and may have been intended to rival the new red-figure method, but failed to attain popularity.
We next meet with the process in Southern Italy, where it again appears as the last effort of a worn-out fashion to flicker into life with renewed popularity. The centre of this revival, which follows on after the Apulian vases of the third century, was Gnatia (Fasano), on the coast of that district. The vases are partly modelled in relief, or have ornaments in relief attached; the decoration, in white and purple, is confined to one side only, and is very feeble and limited in its scope. An apparently local variety, perhaps made in Campania by native craftsmen, has the figures in opaque red, with details marked by rudely incised lines.
The Gnatia style was adopted by the Romans in the second century for a small series of vases inscribed with names of Italian deities, such as Juno and Vesta (p. [490]), and it appears in the method of decoration known as en barbotine on the pottery of the Empire (see Chapters [XXI]., [XXIII].).
FIG. 73. VASE-PAINTER VARNISHING CUP ON WHEEL.
The instruments which were employed for the painting of the vases were not, as formerly supposed, limited to a metal or reed pen, and a camel’s-hair brush. It has been recently pointed out in a most illuminating article by Dr. Hartwig[[800]] that the lines of black bordering the figures on red-figured vases are usually double, the space in between being filled in with varnish thus:
. Practical experiments have shown that this can be obtained with a feather brush or pen, drawing the lines separately, not concurrently, as might be done with a metal pen.[[801]] The feathers of the snipe were specially suitable for this purpose, as were also those of the swallow. It is probable that we see the use of the ordinary brush on the Ruvo vase-painting already mentioned, but this was no doubt used for filling in the ground and all parts where the colour was laid on in large masses. Again, on a fragment from the Athenian Acropolis (Fig. [73])[[802]] a man is seen covering the inside of a B.F. kylix with black varnish while he turns it on the wheel; this is also done with an ordinary brush. But there is a R.F. kylix,[[803]] on the interior of which we see the undoubted use of the feather-brush or pen (Fig. [74]). In his left hand the painter seems to hold the sharp tool for engraving the outlines of the figures, and with his right he manipulates the feather-pen which is seen to consist of a small feather inserted in a wooden holder.