FIG. 159. LOTOS-FLOWER ON CYPRIOTE VASE.
In the Graeco-Phoenician pottery of Cyprus the lotos-flower often appears in a purely Egyptian form (Fig. [159], from C 165 in B.M.), but it is more often combined with and almost merged in some elaborate system of patterns too complicated to describe or define by any name.[[2041]] But in Greek vase-paintings, in which it first makes its appearance in the seventh century, it is always more or less conventional. It is thus found on the Melian amphorae in combination with systems of spirals[[2042]]; though on the shoulder of the example given by Riegl there occurs a band of lotos-flowers alternately upright and inverted, linked together by scrolls, where the form is almost that of Egyptian art, except that the cup of the flower is rounder, the petals shorter and blunter. It is obviously as yet in the transitional stage. Next we meet with it in the vases of Ionia, especially in those of the so-called Rhodian and earlier Naukratite styles, which have friezes of lotos-flowers alternating with closed buds or with palmettes, connected by tendrils (Fig. [160]). A similar pattern, on an exceptionally large scale and treated in polychrome (white and purple), surrounds the lower portion of the body on several of the later Caeretan hydriae (cf. Plate [XXVI].). But in most of the fabrics of the sixth century the bud seems to have been preferred to the open flower of the ornament.[[2043]] Rows of lotos-buds linked by tendrils, upright or inverted, are found on the Cyrenaic cups, on the vases of the Chalcidian type, and on the later Ionic fabrics, such as the Rhodian kylikes in the British Museum (B 379–81). Sometimes, too, a single bud appears in the design itself, overhanging the scene or rising from the ground. On the so-called Pontic vases the buds are isolated, and placed alternately upright and pendent. In the Corinthian and early Attic fabrics the lotos-flower is found, combined in various ways with palmettes and tendrils, as a neck-ornament, or above a panel, or under the handles, and also as a centre in heraldic compositions (Fig. [161]); but subsequently the buds resume their sway, and are found bordering the panels of black-bodied amphorae (as in Fig. [162]), forming a lower border to the designs on the red-bodied, and also on the shoulder of lekythi. These motives linger on in the earlier R.F. amphorae and hydriae, and in the column-handled kraters; rows of buds of a degenerate elongated form, on the lip, neck, or shoulder, are continued well into the period of the South Italian fabrics.
FIG. 160. LOTOS-FLOWERS AND BUDS (RHODIAN).
FIG. 161. PALMETTE- AND LOTOS-PATTERN
(EARLY B.F.).
FIG. 162. LOTOS-BUDS (ATTIC B.F.).