PLATE XXXVII
Interior of Kylix of Transitional Style; 2, Plate by Epiktetos (British Museum).
Murray thus describes the chief characteristics of Epiktetos' work[[1320]]: “No painter is so uniform and at the same time so peculiar in his manner as Epiktetos. His drawing is always characterised by precision and fastidiousness. He loves slim, youthful forms.... He prefers to draw his figures on a small scale, where his minute touches produce at times a startling vividness. He appears to have been influenced in a measure by the older miniature vase-painters [the ‘minor artists’] ... his manner is singularly precise and fastidious ... but his precision never fails him.... He uses skilfully faint yellow lines for the inner markings of muscle and bone.” Hartwig points out that he continues the development of a refined archaism from Amasis (p. [382]). The period of his activity may be placed between 530 and 500 B.C.
Pamphaios, although the majority of his vases are in the R.F. technique, really excelled in the old method. We have from his hand two B.F. hydriae, four B.F. kylikes, two mixed kylikes, fifteen R.F. kylikes (five with interior designs only), two amphorae and a stamnos, and he also made two cups for Epiktetos. He signs consistently ἐποίησεν. In the B.F. hydria in the British Museum (B 300 = Fig. [120]), he, as Murray says, has indulged to excess his sense of refinement and grace, in which he was unsurpassed. When he turned to red figures, the new technique seems to have perplexed him, and he found himself unable to use his faculty for minute detail. But though comparatively coarse and decadent, there is a freshness and vigour in his new conceptions, especially in the Museum stamnos (E 437) with Herakles and Acheloos, which atones for other deficiencies.
Most remarkable of all his signed works is the British Museum kylix (E 12), with its exquisite exterior designs, of which Murray says, “Surely in the whole realm of Greek vase-painting there is hardly to be met with a finer conception” than the figures of the two wind-gods or death-deities carrying off the body of the dead warrior. Nor are the figures of Amazons arming on the other side of inferior merit. So marked, indeed, is the superiority of these designs to Pamphaios' ordinary work, that most authorities are agreed in attributing them to another artist belonging to a more advanced school—namely, Euphronios. We have after all no certain proof that the painting of the cup is Pamphaios’ handiwork, and we can only say that, if it is, it betokens a most surprising outbreak of artistic power.
Of the other artists in this cycle Hischylos appears chiefly as a potter for other artists; for Sakonides he made a (B.F.) kylix, for Epiktetos four, and for Pheidippos one. A B.F. plate, two “mixed” cups, and one R.F. cup bear his name alone. He always signs with ἐποίησεν, but it is not improbable that he was responsible for the interior B.F. designs on three of the cups made for Epiktetos. Pheidippos is only known from the one cup already mentioned. Euergides made three cups, Epilykos three,[[1321]] Hermaios five[[1322]] (one of which bears a figure of Hermes, perhaps by way of a sort of canting heraldry), and Sikanos one plate. The cups by Chelis number five, of which one has a B.F. interior.
Chachrylion, who stands on the verge of the next period, calls for more detailed treatment, especially since the exhaustive discussion of his work by Hartwig.[[1323]] Sixteen cups signed by him are known, two having been discovered since Klein made his list; he also acted as potter for Euphronios on one occasion. He always signs ἐποίησεν, but we may assume that this includes the decoration of the vases. With him we enter upon the period in which the use of “favourite names” by vase-painters becomes regular, those employed by Chachrylion being Leagros and Memnon. The former name is also used by Oltos, Euthymides, and Euphronios, and the names of Epidromos and Athenodotos belong to this period, if not to this cycle. A number of vases with the name Memnon have no signature, and these have usually been attributed en bloc to Chachrylion. But it has been pointed out by Hartwig that some of them must belong to an earlier stage, standing in much closer relation to the B.F. vases. Besides the sixteen signed vases, Hartwig assigns to him seven with the name of Epidromos, and two others with that of Leagros in addition, and another without name. A remarkable number of these cups have no exterior decoration.
Chachrylion’s work is in character essentially transitional. Some of his cups[[1324]] are in the style of the archaic decadence, before the new influence of Euphronios, but he never freed himself from the trammels of the severe style. He drops the Epictetan method of decorating the exterior with large eyes and animals bounding the scene, and uses large palmettes under the handles; but his interior scenes are still bordered with a plain ring, instead of the later maeander. He is never altogether happy in his exterior designs; hence his preference for interiors, in which, it may be noted, he is almost the first to introduce more than one figure.[[1325]] His figures, like those of Epiktetos, have slim proportions and small heads, the bodily forms better rendered than the limbs. He seems to strike a medium between the vigour of Pamphaios and the refinement of Epiktetos, combining robustness and grace with a tendency to largeness of style,[[1326]] which shows that he is preparing the way for Euphronios.