It will therefore be the object of this and of the succeeding chapters to trace with all possible detail, as far as space permits, the history of Greek vase-manufacture and vase-painting in all their aspects. We have already indicated (p. [31]) the limits within which the subject falls, and the convenient rough division into four main classes of which it permits (p. [23]). This introductory chapter, therefore, deals with the primitive fabrics, leading up, through the two following, to the period of black-figured vases in Chapter IX. The lines of demarcation are, indeed, difficult if not impossible to draw, but they must not in any case be taken as rigid ones, being largely conventional, and only adopted in order to obtain a point of division for the chapters.
Perhaps the leading feature of the early history of Greek vases is the gradual coalescence of the numerous local fabrics first into two or three main streams, and finally into the one great and all-absorbing current of Athenian art. In the sixth century this was really brought about more by historical causes than anything else, as a result of the gradually increasing supremacy of Athens in art and culture from the time of the Peisistratidae down to that of Perikles.
One region, and one only, pursues its artistic course without regard to the contemporaneous tendencies prevailing in the Greek world, and that is the island of Cyprus. Here again the causes are largely political, as we shall see; largely also ethnographical and geographical, from the character of the inhabitants and the position of the island, a meeting-place and bone of contention between the great nations of the Eastern Mediterranean. For this reason we propose to deal first with the pottery of Cyprus, which has little in common with that of the rest of Greece, and always retains something of its primitive character, though it is always as much influenced from Greece on the one hand as from the East on the other. It is in Cyprus also that we meet with some of the earliest remains of pottery yet found on Greek soil.
§ 1. Cypriote Pottery
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cesnola, Cyprus; O.-Richter, Kypros, the Bible, and Homer; Perrot and Chipiez, Hist. de l’Art, iii. p. 648 ff.; Cyprus Mus. Cat. (Myres and O.-Richter); B.M. Excavations in Cyprus (Turner Bequest), 1894–6; Dümmler in Ath. Mitth. xi. (1886), p. 209 ff.; Archaeologia, xlv. p. 127 ff.; Pottier, Cat. des Vases ant. du Louvre, i. p. 82 ff., and other references there given.
In order to understand aright the history of Cypriote art, it is indeed necessary to know something of its ethnography and political history, and the various influences to which it has been subjected. But space forbids us to do more than make very brief allusions to the more important of these features. Speaking generally, Cyprus may be regarded as a centre wherein have met all the currents of ancient civilisation, forming an amalgamation of artistic elements. Thus Cypriote art, though it loses in originality, gains in interest; and yet though often slavishly imitative, it has at bottom great individuality, more especially in its pottery. Hence it will be seen that it is essentially necessary to consider the pottery of Cyprus as a thing apart.
As regards chronology, except for a certain determinable sequence of artistic phases, even more caution than in dealing with Hellenic art is required. The remarkable conservatism and persistence of types exhibited by Cypriote art has more than once proved a pitfall, and has given rise to considerable controversy at one time or another. Dates can only be used in the vaguest manner.
The pottery of Cyprus falls under three headings, which for convenience, though not perhaps with the strictest accuracy, are usually defined as follows:—
1. Bronze Age, from about 2500 B.C. to 800 B.C.