(2) All vases by different artists, but with the same καλός-name, are approximately contemporaneous, i.e. within ten years.
(3) The appearance of two or more καλός-names on the same vase indicates the approximate similarity of age of the persons named, the greatest possible difference being ten years.
(4) All vases with the same καλός-name, whether by one artist or more, can always be linked together by their style; the same name does not appear on a man’s earliest and latest vases.
He further impresses the caution that the identity and position of the παῖδες καλοί (i.e. whether or no they belonged to the aristocratic class) is a secondary question compared with that of the development of painting which they help to elucidate.
The question of fabric is one that hardly needs discussion, the evidence pointing so unanimously to Athens in all cases. The apparent exceptions suggested by classes of vases found almost exclusively on one site, like the “Nolan” amphorae or the Gela lekythi, can easily be shown to be no real exceptions. We have already met more than once with instances of particular fabrics being favoured by particular places; and just as Ionian vases were imported to Caere or Vulci, and a special class of Attic B.F. vases made for Cyprus, so we may suppose that certain Athenian makers had a monopoly of export to Nola, to Gela, or elsewhere. Otherwise similarity of style, of technique, of subject, of the alphabet of inscriptions, and all other details point to a purely homogeneous fabric, and that this was located in Athens itself is not a matter to be seriously disputed. To this complete monopoly which Athens enjoyed in the fifth century only one exception can be traced, that of Boeotia, where local fabrics continued to be made at Thebes and Tanagra. Of these one class has already been discussed (p. [391]); the other will be treated of subsequently (p. [451]).
We must next consider briefly the technical characteristics and the forms of the Attic R.F. vases. As regards the former, the method pursued during the period under consideration may be summarised as follows. The artist sketches his design on the red clay with a fine-pointed tool; he then surrounds this outline with black varnish, laid on with a pen or brush,[[1281]] to the extent of about an eighth of an inch all round, this being done to prevent the varnish, when laid on over the rest of the ground, from running over into any part of the design. Finally, details such as features or folds of drapery are added with a brush in black lines on the red, this process representing the incised lines of the old style; and further details are often expressed either in a thinned black pigment which becomes brown and is sometimes only perceptible in a strong light, or by application of white and purple as in the last period. In the severe style purple is generally used; but at a later stage this colour was dropped, and finally replaced by white. The accessory colours were chiefly used for fillets in the hair, liquids, flowers, and other small details, as well as for inscriptions. Thus we see that the technical process of the preceding method is exactly reversed and that the figures now stand out in the natural colour of the clay against the black ground.
The advantages of the new method were obvious. As long as the vase-painters continued content with stiff and hieratic forms and mere silhouettes the black figures were sufficient. The careful mapping-out of the hair and muscles, the decorations, and all the details of shadow in painting and of unequal surface in sculpture could be easily expressed by the new method. But it is evident that these stiff lines were quite inadequate to express those softer contours, which melted, as it were, into one another, and marked the more refined grace and freedom of the rapidly advancing schools of sculpture and painting. By the change of colour of the figures to the lucid red or orange of the background, the artist was enabled to draw lines of a tone or tint scarcely darker than the clay itself, but still sufficient to express all the finer anatomical details; while the more important outlines still continued to be marked with fine black lines. At first the style is essentially the same, the forms precise, the eyes in profile, the attitudes rigid, and the draperies rectilinear. The backgrounds may have been painted in by an ordinary workman, and some specimens exist in which it has never been laid on (cf. p. [222]). The artists seem to have worked from slight sketches, and according to their individual feelings and ideas, and as duplicate designs are quite unknown, there was clearly no system of copying.
The correspondence of style in the figures on the earlier R.F. vases to those of B.F. technique shows that the two methods must have coexisted for a time, and this is further borne out by the mixed vases of Andokides, Hischylos, and others, and by the work of artists who employed either style, like Pamphaios. The latter, for instance, seems to have adhered to the old style by preference for hydriae and large vases, but preferred to follow the new fashion in the kylix.
To quote a recent writer: “The new method opened up a path for the freer exercise of the imagination,” and we can see in the red-figure vases a gradual development of artistic conception and power of expression, together with the shaking off of all restrictions until the perfection of drawing is reached, and “the red figures stand out against the black, unencumbered with anything that might distract from harmony of colouring or purity of outline.”[[1282]] It is the essential characteristic of the new style that it is drawing rather than painting, and it stands out as the final attainment of what the vase-painters had really been striving after from the days of the Melian and early Ionic wares—namely, the perfection of linear design. The same principle is at work in the vases with white ground which passed through parallel phases of development.
Among minor details of drawing in which an advance is conspicuous is the treatment of hair, eyes, and drapery. In the B.F. style the hair was indicated as a black mass, standing out against the light background; but now that the background had become black, a separation was necessary. At first this was done by adhering to the old engraved line method, for which came to be substituted a narrow unpainted line. Next, an advance was made in the treatment of the hair itself, with a view to more accuracy in detail, and the contours are undulated or separate locks shown on the forehead. Sometimes a kind of stippling process is adopted, by means of which the hair is indicated by rows or clusters of raised dots, representing close curls, such as are seen in Attic sculpture of the late archaic period.