Sotades stands apart from his contemporaries as an artist of much individuality, with a tendency to great refinement and delicacy in his work. He has left one R.F. kantharos and some half-dozen vases of the white-ground type, two with very interesting subjects (see also p. [457]); all but the first were formerly in M. van Branteghem’s collection, and these are now divided between the British and Boston Museums. He is remarkable for his extremely delicate cups, with handles in the form of a chicken’s merrythought, and he also made two phialae with white interior and moulded exterior painted in rings of red, white, and black; on the interior of one of these a cicala (τέττιξ) is ingeniously modelled so as to appear resting there (Plate [XL].). Hegesiboulos, one of whose vases was also in the Van Branteghem collection,[[1380]] seems to have been an artist of similar tendencies.
Of the rest, Epigenes' name appears on a small kantharos in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and those of Megakles and Maurion on pyxides. Among the painters who exercised their skill on larger vases the most noteworthy is Polygnotos, who has left an amphora and two stamni. The similarity of his name to that of the great contemporary painter has naturally led to conjectures as to a possible connection of the two, which has been discussed by Professor Robert in publishing two of the vases with his signature.[[1381]] His conclusion is that they belong to the period 460–450 B.C., in which the influence of the painter is beginning to make itself felt, but only in isolated figures and motives, not, as in a class of which we shall presently speak, in the composition of scenes. The earliest of the three is the stamnos in Brussels, with the subject of Kaineus overwhelmed by the Centaurs[[1382]]; next comes the stamnos with the combat of Herakles and the Centaur Dexamenos[[1383]]; and lastly the British Museum amphora,[[1384]] which retains an archaic form, but in its style and drawing presents no traces of archaism.[[1385]] In the reverses of his vases, with their tendency to meaningless and carelessly drawn figures, we seem to trace the beginnings of the decadence. Hermonax, who painted four stamni and a “pelike,” seems to be closely associated in style with Polygnotos.[[1386]] Professor Robert would also attribute to a pupil of Polygnotos three fine R.F. cups of about 445 B.C.—the Kodros cup in Bologna (Chapter XIV.) and two in Berlin (2537–38), with the subjects of the birth of Erichthonios, and Aegeus consulting the oracle of Themis.
Nikias, of whom we have only one example, a bell-shaped krater in the British Museum (formerly in the Tyszkiewicz collection),[[1387]] is evidently, from the form of the vase and the style of the paintings, an artist of the latest stage of R.F. vase-painting at Athens. He is, however, remarkable in one respect, namely the form of his signature,[[1388]] which gives not only his parentage but—a unique instance among vase-painters—his deme:
Νικίας Ἐρμοκλέους Ἀναθλύσιος ἐποίησεν.
The subject of the vase is the torch-race, one often found on late Athenian kraters, and seldom at an earlier date.
Lastly we have a hydria from the hand of Meidias, in the British Museum, which originally formed part of the Hamilton collection (Plate [XLI].). Winckelmann estimated it above all other vases known to him, and regarded it as illustrating the highest achievement of the Greeks in the way of drawing. His criticism is hardly even now out of date, in spite of the enormous number that now challenge comparison with it, as far as concerns the beauty and richness of the drawing and of the composition. The artist, says Furtwaengler, “revels in a sea of beauty and grace; youth and charm are idealised in his work.” In point of style it belongs to the epoch of the Peloponnesian War, about 430–420 B.C., but so admirable is the work that it can hardly be placed so low as the contemporary vases of “late fine” style, with their patent evidences of decadence. Meidias may therefore fairly be included with the foregoing.[[1389]]
PLATE XLI
