GREEK VASE-PAINTING

PLATE I.

Frontispiece: THESEUS, ATHENA AND AMPHITRITE: KYLIX WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER EUPHRONIOS

From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei.

GREEK
VASE-PAINTING
by ERNST BUSCHOR

WITH C·L·X ILLUSTRATIONS
TRANSLATED BY G. C. RICHARDS
M.A., F.S.A., FELLOW OF ORIEL
COLLEGE OXFORD & WITH A
PREFACE BY PERCY GARDNER
LITT.D., F.B.A., PROFESSOR OF
CLASSICAL ARCHÆOLOGY
IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF OXFORD

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1921

CONTENTS

PREFACE

A HISTORY of Greek vase-painting has been for a long time a desideratum of students of Greek art and antiquity. Many years ago I planned such a work, but the difficulty of the necessary illustration caused the plan to break down. In the meantime an extensive literature has grown up on the subject, mainly in German, but with contributions from other countries. In his first chapter Dr. Buschor has shewn how the result of excavation in Greece and Italy has been to throw our starting-point further and further back, until it lies in the Neolithic age. But it is not only in regard to the earlier phases of Greek vase-painting that research has brought light: the red-figured vase-painting which is one of the most perfect fruits of Greek art in the fifth century has been far more minutely and intensively studied. The result has been to fix the outlines, and more than the outlines, of the history of a fourth great branch of Greek artistic activity; the history of architecture, of sculpture and of coinage having been already thoroughly investigated. And this fourth branch is not merely vase-painting; but since the fresco and other paintings of the great age of Greece have almost entirely perished, we may fairly say that it includes almost all that we can ever know of the history of early Greek painting. Vase-paintings can but feebly image the colouring of the great painters of Greece; but they can give us invaluable information as to the principles of grouping and perspective adopted by them; they can reflect the extreme beauty of their figure-drawing; and they can shew us how they treated subjects from the vast repertory of Greek mythology and poetry.

Most of those who take up the study of Greek art are strongly attracted by vases, the subjects of which are more varied, and the treatment freer than is the case with sculpture. For mythology, religion, athletics, daily life, they are first-hand authorities. Yet one may fairly say that, until a few years ago, satisfactory study of them was impossible. Vase-paintings, in consequence of the shape of the vessels themselves, can very seldom be adequately reproduced by photography. And the published drawings of them, until about 1880, were quite untrustworthy; partly because the draughtsmen had insufficient sense of style, partly because most of the vases in the great museums were more or less restored, often in a most misleading way.

Thus merely to reproduce published engravings of the vases was quite misleading. The truth about them could only be known from a technical examination of the originals scattered through Europe. Yet one must say that in nearly all our English classical books and dictionaries, old engravings are uncritically reproduced. It is a fouling of the springs; and however practically inevitable such a course may often have been, the result is that the reader never knows whether he is treading on firm ice or on a mere crust. Anything more reckless and misleading than the procedure of the publishers and editors of illustrated classical books can scarcely be imagined. The errors resulting can only be weeded out by slow degrees.

Since about 1880 things have slowly mended. The German Archæological Institute, and the French and English Societies for the promotion of Hellenic Studies have published really careful drawings of a multitude of vases, Mr. F. Anderson in England being one of the most accurate and careful of the artists employed. In the last few years the catalogues of vases in Berlin, Paris, Munich, London and other places have given authoritative information as to restorations. A fresh era in the knowledge of technique and subject was begun by the magnificent publication of Furtwängler and Reichhold, with its splendid plates. At present the most authoritative works on early red-figured vases are those of an Oxford man, Mr. J. D. Beazley, and an American, Mr. J. C. Hoppin. Mr. Beazley has been good enough carefully to revise the present translation.

We have reached a stage at which, for all but specialists, what was most needed was a general history of Greek vases in all their periods, compiled by a trustworthy authority, and so fully illustrated (no easy matter) as to enable a reader to follow the text throughout. Thus would the whole subject be mapped out, and the approach to any particular province be made easy. Such a book is that of Dr. Buschor. His examples are carefully chosen; his text shews full mastery of the subject; and it is very unlikely that his treatment will be superseded for a long time to come. It is, however, a book not adapted for a mere cursory reading, but for careful consideration and study.

I may add a few words by way of introduction to the subject. We may divide the whole history of Greek pottery into two sections, which are separated one from the other by the line which divides primitive from mature Greece, about the middle of the sixth century.

Before that time, before the age of Crœsus and the rise of the Persian Empire, the history of Greece is very imperfectly known to us, through the traditions of the temples and the old families, which are seldom wholly to be trusted. Where history is uncertain it is of untold value to have monuments and works of human manufacture to supplement it. These provide a skeleton of fact with which to compare legend and tradition. It is now generally recognized that before writings in the form of inscriptions and coins come into general use, pottery furnishes the most continuous and most trustworthy material for the dating of sites, indications of commercial intercourse, the movements of peoples. In recent years the study of prehistoric Greece has made immense strides, primarily owing to the excavations of Schliemann, Evans and other investigators. The subject seems to fascinate the younger generation of archæologists; and the pottery found in the graves of the early inhabitants of Greece and Asia Minor has been worked at with great minuteness and to much result. It has revealed to us the outlines of the early history of Crete, the Troad, Laconia, Thessaly, and a number of other districts. Constant comparison with the results of finds in Egypt which can be dated from inscriptions has revealed in a measure the state of the civilization of the Ægean in century beyond century, back to Neolithic times.

When Greek civilization became fully established, in the sixth century, when inscriptions and coins begin to give us far more exact information than that which can be derived from pottery, the interest attaching to the latter does not cease, but it changes in character. We no longer go to it to determine the outlines of the history of civilization. But it has now become a thing precious in itself because of its beauty, its close relation to the poetry, the religion and the life of Greece. The elegant forms of Greek vases and the charm of the designs painted on them have caused them to be sought after by great museums and wealthy collectors. The graves of Italy, Sicily, Hellas, have poured out a constant supply of these works of art, some of them beyond value. Classical archæologists have naturally given much attention to them; and of late years the assignment of examples to noted masters, and the study of their technique have been zealously prosecuted. They belong too wholly to a civilization which has passed away to be readily understood by ordinary visitors of museums; but those who have once been bitten with their charm find in them an occupation, a delight and a solace which are great helps in life. Greece is the classical land of art in all its forms, and the principles of art which were established by the successive schools of art there can never be wholly neglected. If we set aside the pottery of China and Japan, which is, in another sphere, of unsurpassed beauty, the pottery of Greece is the only perfectly developed and thoroughly consistent pottery in the world; and the noted productions of modern Europe seem in comparison poor and half-civilized.

Dr. Buschor’s general plan has compelled him to write but in a summary way of the works of red-figured style, which are incomparably the most beautiful. In fact, in such small and rough illustrations as are possible in a handbook, their quality could not be reproduced. For them the reader must go on to other works, or visit the vase-rooms of museums. A conspectus of successive styles and periods was all that was possible. And I think that enough is here accomplished to arouse the interest of those who love art and have some sympathy with the Greek spirit.

The old supremacy of the Classics in education has passed away, and in future they will have to hold their own not by prescriptive right but in virtue of their intrinsic value, on which more and more stress is being laid by those who feel what their neglect in the modern world would mean. It is time to strengthen their hold by shewing how they lie at the very root of philosophy, literature and art. Our successors will not be satisfied with drilling boys in Greek and Latin grammar, but will have to insist on the place held by ancient peoples, the Jews, the Greeks and the Romans, in the evolution of all that is valuable and delightful in the modern world. We have to widen the field of Classics, and illustrate the literature from every point of view. And if it be felt that the object of education is not merely to enable boys and girls to earn a living, but to help them to lead a worthy and happy life, then I have no fear that the Classics will be permanently eclipsed.

Mr. Richards’ work as a translator was very difficult. In spite of kindred origin, the German mind in literary production moves on different lines from the English. Not only is the order of words in a sentence different, but the sentences themselves are much more involved, and German scientific writers aim at an exactness in the use of terms which we seldom attempt. Mr. Richards’ version is very accurate; but it must be allowed to be not always easy reading. He preferred to retain as much as possible of the meaning, even if it involved some stiffness in the text. Students will thank him for this; and if the general reader finds that he has to give the text a closer attention than he is used to give to books, he will in fact have his reward.

Dr. Buschor’s work is a solid stone for the temple of knowledge, and the main lines of the subject are now so firmly fixed by induction, that they are not likely to suffer very much change in the future.

P. Gardner.

CHAPTER I.
THE STONE AND BRONZE AGES

STUDENTS of the history of Greek vases have been gradually led backwards from a late period to earlier and earlier stages of civilization by the course of circumstances. First of all graves were opened in Lower Italy; the first great collection of vases, formed by Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador in Naples, and published in 1791-1803, contained chiefly the output of later Italian manufactories. Next, from 1828 onwards, the doors of Etruscan graves were unlocked, and their contents proved to be the rich treasures of Greek red and black-figured vases, procured in such numbers by the Etruscans of the 6th and 5th centuries. About twenty years later a bright light was thrown on eastern Greek pottery of the 7th century by the discovery of a cemetery in Rhodes. About 1870 the ‘Geometric’ style became known and the Dipylon vases at Athens were revealed. In the seventies and eighties Schliemann’s spade unearthed the Mycenean civilization, and in the beginning of the present century we were introduced to the culmination of this period in Crete. Finally in quite recent times finds of vases of the Stone Age in Crete and in North Greece have given us a view of vase-production in the third millennium B.C. If therefore we wish to retrace this long road, we must begin at a period, of which the investigation has only just begun and which presents most difficult problems.

The excavations in Northern Greece, i.e., in North Boeotia, Phocis and above all Thessaly, have introduced us to a purely Neolithic civilization. Here alongside of the two simpler prehistoric techniques, unornamented (monochrome) and incised ware, was discovered, even in the oldest strata, a richly developed painted style, with linear ornaments painted either in red on vases with a white slip or in white on vases made red by firing. The monochrome, red or black vases are often brilliantly polished and of excellent workmanship. In the later layers of the Stone Age finds this civilization differs considerably according to locality. One class of painted (and incised) vases is very prominent: it was found chiefly at Dimini and Sesklo, and shows quite a new principle of decoration (Fig. [1]). It combines curvilinear patterns, especially the spiral motive, with rectilinear decoration (zig-zag, step pattern, chequers, primitive maeander, etc.); the colouring varies, white on red, black on white, brown on yellow. Side by side with this style we find in other places the greatest variety of painted and unpainted vases: even polychrome decoration appears. In the early Bronze Age all this splendour vanishes and gives place to the production of coarse unpainted ware.

It appears that this Stone-Age Ceramic of North Greece has no connection with the finds of South Greece, and is rather to be traced to the North and the civilization of the Danube valley.

The South presents us with a much more primitive picture. The large layer of Stone Age finds, which came to light in Crete, produced vases with incised geometrical ornament, alongside of coarse undecorated pottery, but curvilinear patterns of Thessalian type are completely absent and painted vases are rare. The reason for a less elaborate development of Neolithic civilization in Crete seems to be that it gave place to the Bronze Age comparatively

PLATE II.

[Fig. 1]. STONE AGE BOWL FROM THESSALY.

Fig. 2. FACE-URN FROM TROY II-V.

early: in Thessaly it seems to go down far into the second millennium.

According to these early vase finds one has thus to picture to oneself the beginnings of ceramic art. First, the most essential household vessels are fashioned by hand out of imperfectly cleansed clay, and burnt black in the open fire, and before long the outer surface is also polished, probably with smooth stones. Rectilinear ornaments are pressed or incised into the soft clay, and by degrees the method of filling and indicating the incised lines by a white substance is learned; the clay is also treated plastically, for instance channelled. Gradually the clay is made less impure, is more cleanly polished and more evenly baked in the oven, and by the actual firing has various colours, red, black, grey, yellow and brown, imparted to it. Thus a ground is also obtained for painting, on which the rectilinear ornaments are imposed with colour. Greater solidity and brighter colouring are obtained by covering the vase with a slip, which moreover sets off the painting excellently. The invention of the wrongly styled ‘varnish,’ a black colour glaze which, though technically undeveloped, appears even in North Greece of the Stone Age, is of the highest importance for the whole history of Greek vase-painting. The forms are primitive, little articulated, but already very various: the decoration covers uniformly almost the whole vase.

But the different techniques do not regularly succeed each other; inventions are not immediately communicated from one locality to another; primitive methods subsist alongside of more advanced, nay even sometimes drive them out again. This much is clear, that a section taken through these contemporaneous prehistoric civilizations would present a highly variegated aspect.

The Stone Age is succeeded by the Bronze Age, here earlier and there later; here more quickly, there more slowly; i.e., metals are gradually introduced, and with them new techniques and a new civilization. It is evident that to the earlier Bronze Age belong a series of innovations which are of decisive importance for the history of vases, the invention of the potter’s wheel, the perfection of the so-called ‘varnish,’ and the imitation of metal forms in clay. In most places the potter’s oven and the painting of vases appear only in the early Bronze Age.

Into the early Bronze Age fall the finds from the earliest layers at Troy. In the unalterable faith that he was discovering the world of Homer, with the strong and weak points of a dilettante, Heinrich Schliemann began to dig at Hissarlik, and in the excavations of 1871, 1878, 1890 and 1893 Dörpfeld and he investigated the rubbish hill, which has become so famous, the nine superimposed settlements of which represent as many successive civilizations down to Roman times. The numerous ceramic finds of the five lowest layers show the transition from rude hand-made and ill-baked ware with impressed linear patterns to ever more developed stages. The potter’s wheel and oven finally succeed in producing brilliant red, black, grey, brown vases of the finest technique. The variety of shapes is very great, some are already quite developed; the imitation of metal forms is to be traced here and there. A notable speciality is found in the so-called Face-urns (Fig. [2]), rude imitations of the human form, produced by adding eyes, nose, mouth, ears, nipples and navel; and there are also other vase-types, which are not repeated in Western Greece. Painting is rare, the vases are either monochrome or adorned with incised linear ornaments, which are often applied in the manner of necklaces, or divide the vase vertically.

The Bronze Age civilization of the second city up to the fifth, which, judging by the rich finds of metal utensils and

PLATE III.

Fig. 3. JUG FROM SYROS.

Fig. 4. JUG FROM MYCENÆ.

gold ornaments, was by no means primitive, recurs in the whole of N.W. Asia Minor and in Cyprus. Its last phase cannot be separated in time from the western civilization of the shaft graves ([p. 7]).

Parallel with Troy II-V and the mainland civilization of Marina (below), on the islands of the Aegean is the so-called Cycladic civilization. Its pottery, however, presents a much more variegated picture: beside the primitive vases there are vases incised and painted with rich, not exclusively rectilinear, ornamentation: glazed (‘varnished’) vases also occur. The forms are very varied: bronze and stone vessels often serve as models; the structure of the vases and the distribution of the ornamentation show unmistakeably definite artistic intention. There is great difference between various islands and a comprehensive view of the development is not yet possible. Specimens like the beaked jug from Syros (Fig. [3]) are probably contemporary with the early Minoan style of Crete ([p. 7]), but the pans with engraved spirals, circles, ships and fish are later. On Melos, which has quite a separate position of its own, the influence of the Cretan ‘Kamares’ civilization ([p. 8]) in technique and decoration is obvious.

We return to the mainland and Central Greece. Hagia Marina in Phocis is the chief place in which a pottery, following on the Neolithic, has been found, hand-made with a black or red glaze, with or without rectilinear ornaments in white. This was called ‘Primitive varnish ware,’ before the Neolithic preceding stages had become known. ‘Marina’ ware superseded the Neolithic in Boeotia (Orchomenos) and Thessaly also; similar vases have been found in the western islands (Leukas) and in the Argolid (Tiryns). It is also related to the Cycladic civilization, as is indicated by the jug imitated from metal models, which is common to both styles.

The ‘Marina’ layer is succeeded at Orchomenos by a ware of a totally different kind, which probably spread from this locality and is therefore called ‘Minyan,’ dark-grey and grey or yellow vases, especially (a) drinking-cups, with tall channelled foot, and (b) profiled two-handled cups (Fig. [6]), turned on the wheel, and in shape more plainly even than the Marina ware dependent on metal models. The wide extension of this already finely developed ware combines a series of bronze-age sites into a chronological unit, the so-called ‘Shaft grave’ stage ([p. 7]). In Northern and Central Greece as well as in Leucas it follows on the ‘Marina’ ware, in Attica and Aegina it takes the place of the monochrome and incised ware, in the islands it supersedes the Cycladic pottery, in Troy it is parallel with the ware of Asia Minor and Cyprus, in the Argolid the Marina finds of Tiryns are followed by the shaft graves of Mycenae with Minyan vases.

Almost everywhere along with the Minyan ware we find vases not so finely constructed, generally hand-made, which are neither burnt dark nor glazed, but show a decoration applied in dull colour. This lustreless painting (Mattmalerei) in Central and Northern Greece, and also in Attica (white-ground ware of Aphidna, Eleusis), uses only geometrical ornaments; in the Argolid on red or light clay vases linear patterns, wavy lines, running spirals or even figured decorations (e.g. birds, Fig. 4) are painted in brown colour. The decoration generally emphasises the shoulder; the lower part of the vase is unadorned and separated by stripes from the upper.

The next stage is that Minyan ware and lustreless painting are almost everywhere driven out by Creto-Mycenean ‘Varnish’ pottery. In many places this process did not take place till the end of the Bronze Age, as in Thessaly, Central Greece and Attica (Eleusis). It was apparently

PLATE IV.

[Fig. 5]. KAMARES VASE FROM KNOSSOS.

[Fig. 6]. KYLIX FROM MYCENÆ.

the lords of the Argolid who first and most freely opened their gates to Cretan importation and influence; in the shaft graves of Mycenae, famous for their rich treasure of gold, discovered by Schliemann in 1874 behind the Lion Gate, the oldest Cretan import in the shape of vases of the first late Minoan style ([p. 10]), appears beside Minyan and lustreless ware (Figs. [4] and [6]).

By the side of these local products, the ‘Varnish’ vases in the shaft graves appear like children of a strange and sunnier world, representative of a quite different and superior style of art. The idea that they came from Crete has been confirmed by the excavations carried on since 1900, which in different parts of the island disclosed a compact civilization of markedly un-Greek character, developing without a break from the third millennium to the end of the second, which is in striking contrast to that of the mainland. This civilization has been named Minoan after the fabulous king Minos, the builder of the labyrinth, and it has been divided into three epochs, of which the first two precede the period of the shaft graves.

In the early Minoan period, following on the miserable Stone Age ([p. 2]) the Cretans must have laid the foundation of their riches, if an inference may be drawn from the stone vases and goldsmith’s work of Mochlos. The ceramic art enters on two paths, which have a future before them. The vases were hitherto unpainted and only incised. Now either they are covered with brilliant black paint (‘varnish’) on which the old patterns are painted in tenacious white colour, a technique which celebrated its triumph in the subsequent period, or the vases are left in the colour of the clay and painted with bands of ‘varnish’; to this so-called ‘Mycenean’ technique belongs the whole late period ([p. 10]). There is a special group of flamed ware, the patterns of which, like much that is Minoan, are far nearer to modern applied art than to Greek. Even in the first half of this period the kiln seems already to be known; the potter’s wheel appears in the second, which is characterized by the first appearance of curvilinear patterns, especially the wave series and running spiral.

The Middle Minoan period, a pure and richly-developed bronze civilization, is the height of polychromy: the clay is finely cleansed, the black glaze is at its very best, red in different shades occurs besides white. A transition leads to the brilliant period of the Kamares style, named after the first discoveries in the Kamares cave on Mt. Ida. The ‘Mycenean technique’ occurs not infrequently alongside of the polychrome; but as it often edges the ornaments with incised lines or puts white spots on them, it does not reject the tendency to richer effect, which is a feature of the age and is also expressed in the relief-like ornamentation of many vases (Barbotine). The ornamentation is still very fond of linear patterns, and also develops the spiral still further, and lays the foundation of the numerous decorative motives which characterize the later periods; living creatures also (birds, fishes, quadrupeds) are represented in painting. The motive of drops falling from the brush, which would be inconceivable in Greek vase-painting proper, occurs already. There is a simultaneous use of decoration in bands, and without division; the emphasizing of the shoulder by ornamentation is found in contrast with the lower part decorated, if at all, with stripes (Figs. [3] and [4]). The stock of forms increases, and the imitation of metal-work is often unmistakeable.

In the Kamares style proper (Figs. [5] and [9]) polychromy (white, red, and dark yellow on black) reaches its highest development, the greatest variety of plastic decoration appears, the Mycenean technique (dark on light) is relegated to the background.

PLATE V.

Figs. 7 & 8. FUNNEL-VASES OF LATE MINOAN I STYLE. FROM PALAIKASTRO AND PSEIRA.

[Fig. 9]. KAMARES PITHOS FROM PHAISTOS.

The shapes become continually more delicate, metal vases are often directly copied; cups, beaked jugs, beaked saucers, and amphorae with handles at the mouth are specially common. The list of ornaments is much increased and can scarcely be described in few words. By the side or in the place of geometrical motives, crosses, zig-zags, groups of strokes, and richly developed circle, bow and spiral motives, appear vegetable, leaves, branches, rosettes, and most important of all, the continuous wavy tendril. Even living beings appear occasionally.

The plant ornamentation of the Kamares vases is in a peculiar relation to nature. Though nature is here for the first time consistently imitated, the reproduction is not at all ‘naturalistic’ but thoroughly and from the first severely stylized. Not only does the colouring bear no relation to the object represented, not only is the combination of vegetable and geometric motives of purely decorative character, but the natural object imitated is often barely recognizable. The Kamares potter only aims at a pretty combination of colour and line, not at representations. Nor is he concerned with structural arrangement: division by bands and emphasizing the lower part of the vase by leaves pointing upward are uncommon. Usually the decoration spreads freely over the field and is not subordinated to the structure of the vessel. This undisputed predominance of the ornamentation is in the sharpest contrast to the procedure of Greek art proper.

The Kamares civilization, starting from Crete, exercised influence over the islands of the Aegean: the importation and imitation of its ware can be proved for Thera and Melos. Isolated finds in Egypt are of importance, first because they prove the relation of Crete to the Nile valley, and secondly because they give a fixed date (XII Dynasty). The technique did not disappear with the Middle Minoan Age, but was long maintained alongside of the new style.

The Kamares finds come mostly from the older palaces of Phaistos and Knossos. The investigation of their ruins has shown that these buildings were destroyed by fire and soon afterwards replaced by still finer new edifices. The vase finds in these later palaces show a complete break with the old style. Polychromy is no longer the principal attraction; it is given only a secondary place: the new style (Middle Minoan III and Late Minoan I, Figs. [7], [8], [10] and [11]), which is no longer satisfied with gay ornamentation, but with fresh vigour essays the conquest of Nature and her excellences, throws off the bands of the old technique, and with bold freedom depicts the newly discovered world in dark colour on light clay. In contrast to the Kamares style, it did not arise on the vases themselves by the enrichment of an ornamental style, but it is to be understood as the reflection of higher techniques. Vase-painting gives only a small extract from the rich array of subjects, which the other lesser arts and the wall-painting of the period conjure before our eyes. Of the wonderfully vivid representations of men and animals, in which the Cretans were masters, nothing is to be found on the vases. This is certainly not an accident, but a sign of the purely decorative feeling of these artists. They did not want to stylize the human or animal body till it became decorative, to distort it for the eye by placing it on a curved surface, and by combining figures to upset the ease and flow of the decorative scheme. Thus they entirely gave up all reproduction of them, and are thus in marked contrast with Greek vase-painting, the history of which may be regarded as a constant struggle to represent mankind and animal creation. The Cretans took to other objects instead, which could be represented in the vigorous way they aimed at, and yet also filled the field decoratively, without any loss to the picture from the

PLATE VI.

[Fig. 10]. STIRRUP-VASE OF LATE MINOAN I STYLE FROM GOURNIA.

[Fig. 11]. AMPHORA OF LATE MINOAN I STYLE FROM PSEIRA.

curve of the vessel. The vegetable world had entered the decoration of vases in the Kamares period: now it does so afresh, but in a totally different spirit. Grasses, branches, ivy, crocuses, lilies as they grow and wave in nature, surround the vases. But these people were specially concerned with the sea, marine plants and live creatures. Lotus flowers, sea-weeds and reeds wave in the water, the cuttle-fish stretches out his feelers, the nautilus swims about, starfish and snails, corals and sea-anemones surround the living objects, and dolphins gambol around.

What impelled the Cretan vase-painters thus unweariedly to represent the marine world exclusively on vases? The explanation can only be sought in that supreme law of the development of artistic style, the talent for invention in a few pioneer brains and the slowness in invention of the many. The excellent idea of having the cool liquid in the vases surrounded by this decorative play of marine life, which filled the field and was so life-like, perhaps came from a single gifted brain. The idea became popular, and the common run of vase-painters created countless variations of the theme.

The excellent naturalism directly inspired by nature, which it transfers with a bold brush to the vases, is limited to a short creative period: immediately the schematic and conventional assert themselves; life disappears, but fixed decorative formulæ remain, and to them the future belongs. Moreover, the stylized ornamentation never ceased to exist alongside of the natural; nay, often appears on the same vase in conjunction with it, in the shape of wavy lines, spirals in different combinations, continuous tendrils (which are also treated naturally) or stylized plants. Thus two methods of decoration are in contrast, one ‘tectonic’ with arrangement in bands, another, which freely scatters naturalistic representations over the vase, a kind of ornament which has made almost everyone who has spoken of it adduce the parallel of Japanese art. The freely adorned vases are also most characteristic of the art of the Cretans, and show most plainly their gay and heedless manner, their free decorative work, their direct relation to nature, foreign to abstraction and idea: they set this art in contrast with the contemporary old civilizations of the Nile and Euphrates as well as with the Greek.

The naturalism of the first Late Minoan period has narrower limits than has been usually estimated. Not only is the stock of themes scanty (Fig. [ 11] is an exception); but also the reproduction of nature is purely superficial, knows nothing of perspective or shading, and stylizes the forms into the style of decorative drawing: thus, for instance, the marine world is represented without any indication of water. Of course, this does not mean that such abstraction from reality is not an advantage from the point of view of decorative art. Often the vase-shapes show a cultivated feeling for form in the way the body swells and contracts, but appear simple and constrained when compared with the fine lines of contour in the next period. Among new types that emerge may be mentioned the ‘stirrup vase’ (Fig. [10]) and the ‘funnel vase’ (Figs. [7] and [8]).

The superiority of these Cretan vases to all contemporary ceramic output showed itself in a vigorous export. The Egyptian finds of this ware give as a date the XVIII dynasty, approximately 1500 B.C., a date confirmed by some Egyptian objects found in Crete. Cretan vases were also exported in quantities to Melos and Thera: there the native industry loses itself in imperfect imitations of this imported ware. The Cretan civilization also enters the Greek mainland, especially the Argolid. The shaft graves of Mycenae ([p. 7]), from which the Late Minoan civilization transplanted to the mainland has been named ‘Mycenean,’

PLATE VII.

Figs. 12 & 13. AMPHORÆ OF THE PALACE STYLE FROM KNOSSOS.

are the oldest instance of this fact. The imported vases of the six graves are distributed over the whole of the first Late Minoan (early Mycenean) period, containing late specimens of Kamares style and early specimens of the Palace style: but the bulk of the ‘varnish’ vases found on the mainland belong to the succeeding period.

The second Late Minoan period of vase production in Crete, the so-called Palace style (Figs. [12] and [13]) is not so sharply divided from the first, as the latter is from the Kamares style. Both phases are connected by several transitional forms and run parallel for a time. An important difference is that the last traces of the Kamares technique (the imposition of white, red and orange on a black ground) disappear: there is simply painting in black on light clay (Mycenean technique). The decoration neglects the neck and foot of the vessel and emphasizes the shoulder, particularly with the characteristic half-branches. The animated reproductions of nature in the preceding style are treated in a fanciful way; they become fixed and are changed into ornaments and patterns for filling; the significant unity of the design is interrupted by foreign elements; the marine and plant ornamentation now never covers the whole vase but retires into a single band. In short, the naturalistic style gives place to a tectonic style, the representations are not the chief thing aimed at, which is the filling of the space. Beside the ornaments produced by the schematizing of living natural forms come new ones, which often look like a borrowing of architectural forms; moreover, the juxtaposition and combination of the ornaments show the same spirit, and also the emphasis now laid on the shape of the vase, in which the structure and the swinging contour reach their highest form of elegance, as can be seen most plainly in the amphorae.

This art had a wide influence outside Crete. To the beginning of the period, the transition from the first to the second Late Minoan style, belong many mainland finds, especially from domed tombs, in Peloponnese (Vaphio, Argos, Mycenae, Old Pylos), in Attica (Athens, Thorikos, Spata), in Boeotia (Thebes, Orchomenos) and in Thessaly (Volo). The finds continue during the period of the developed Palace style. The majority of these ‘varnish’ vases seem not to have been imported from Crete but made by Cretan artizans in the country. The Mycenean local princes, who from their lofty citadels controlled the surrounding country, surrounded themselves more and more with the splendour of this southern civilization, ordered weapons, ornaments, precious vases from Crete, used them in life, gave them to the dead in graves; they also took into their service foreign artists, and gave employment to Cretan masons, painters and potters.

The islands too acquire Cretan vases: they were exported as far as Aegina, Melos, distant Cyprus, and the sixth city of Troy.

About the end of the second Late Minoan period the Cretan palaces of Phaistos, Knossos, and Hagia Triada are destroyed, and with the destruction of these and other sites the Palace style decays.

The pottery of the Late Mycenean (or third Late Minoan) period (Fig. [ 14-17]) is very inferior to that of the Palace style. The technique is at first neat but afterwards falls off: the smooth yellowish clay takes a green tinge, the brilliant glaze colour, often burnt red, becomes a lustreless black. The ornamentation consists of the last remains of the naturalistic decoration, now become quite lifeless and poor, with which are associated purely geometrical patterns of the simplest kind, wavy lines, spirals, concentric circles. Rectilinear patterns (groups of strokes, hatched triangles) become ever more prominent. The decoration is generally

PLATE VIII.

[Fig. 14]. LATE MYCENEAN CUP FROM RHODES.

Fig. 15. LATE MYCENEAN STIRRUP-VASE FROM RHODES.

very loose, emphasizes the shoulder band, and usually puts on the lower half of the vase only a few stripes: vertical division of the field into ‘metopes’ is common.

But, on the other hand, figured representations are not unusual on late Mycenean vases. Two classes can be distinguished off-hand:—(a) animal representations, in traditional ornamental style and very ‘geometrical’ in treatment, particularly birds with cross-hatched bodies, certainly continuations of the old lustreless painting (cp. Fig. [4] with [15]); and (b) larger compositions taken over from wall-painting, often provided with ornaments to fill the field, like the chariot-race on the krater from Rhodes (Fig. [17]). The best-known example is the Warrior vase from Mycenae representing the departure for the battle-field.

Apart from these figured representations, one may say that Cretan vase-painting, after its brilliant achievements in the Kamares, shaft grave, and Palace styles, sinks down to that primitive level from which it started: it becomes once more a geometrical style.

The area over which we find this pottery is enormous, being practically the whole Mediterranean basin, Crete, Egypt, the Cyclades, the coast of Asia Minor (sixth city of Troy) and its adjacent islands (e.g. Rhodes), Cyprus (where the Mycenean supersedes an old and plentiful pottery akin to that of Troy), Phoenicia, Italy, Sicily, and especially all important sites of the Greek mainland. In many places, where the ‘varnish’ painting did not enter earlier, it now comes into contact with the old indigenous technique, with the monochrome, incised and lustreless vases: many backward settlements, like Olympia, seem to have had practically no acquaintance with the Mycenean style.

Here again the Egyptian finds give us a date: they last from about the end of the 15th down into the 12th century. But since it is not conceivable that we should date the Geometrical period, which followed the Mycenean, back into the second millennium, the late Mycenean style must have lasted at least four centuries; the rate of development, which in the time of great achievements had been very rapid, must have become considerably slower.

To arrange the huge mass of late Mycenean vases in this long development is impossible, until the material has been sifted and worked through. But one thing already can be said with certainty, that it was not merely exported from Crete; indeed it is more than questionable, whether Crete played the leading part. In this period the native seat of the brilliant Minoan civilization is no longer in the foreground; the centre of gravity has shifted to the mainland, in particular the Argolid. Even in the period of the shaft graves we see the Peloponnesians eagerly adopting Cretan civilization; in the following period the mainland vies with Crete in the production of Mycenean vases, and finally must have wrested the lead from the southern outpost. This applies not merely to civilization but to political conditions. A hypothesis, in favour of which there is much to be said, connects the destruction of the Cretan palaces with the invasion of conquering ‘Achaeans,’ the name Homer applies to the lords of the mainland. Just as the wall-painting originally borrowed from Crete was still flourishing on the mainland, when it had died out at home, so the late Mycenean pottery must have been produced mainly in continental Greece, and the new style must have been formed by the Peloponnesians. Thus we can explain the non-Minoan elements, the strong geometrical influence on the decoration, and the taking over of figured scenes from wall-painting, which was rejected by the old Cretans.

So it was probably the ‘Achaeans’ who spread the late Mycenean pottery all over the Mediterranean.

PLATE IX.

Figs. 16 & 17. LATE MYCENEAN VASES FROM RHODES.

They had become a seafaring nation on a great scale. Of their entry into Crete we have just spoken, of their united campaigns of conquest in Asia Minor, in which the Cretan king has the Argive Agamemnon as his overlord, the Homeric poems tell us, and of their colonizing expansion in the Mediterranean the vase finds among other things give evidence, as they justify conclusions about new localities of manufacture (Troy, Rhodes, Cyprus, etc.).

In the beginning of the first millennium the scene is totally altered. On the coast of Asia Minor and the islands are settled Hellenic races, among which the Aeolians and Ionians are probably descendants of the emigrated Achaeans, while the Dorians represent a new tribe come in from the north, which subdued the Peloponnese and Crete and extended to the south of the Aegean Sea.

These shiftings of population, the so-called Dorian invasion, with which Greek historians begin the history of their country, mark the end of the Bronze Age and of the Mycenean civilization. Iron weapons, only sporadically to be found in the late Mycenean age, take the place of bronze; the Mycenean vase style vanishes all along the line, and gives way to a new style, the Geometric.

CHAPTER II.
THE GEOMETRIC STYLE

NOW for the first time the history of Greek vases proper begins. In the pottery of the geometric style are latent the forces, which we see afterwards expanding in contact with the East, as well as the oldest beginnings that we can trace of that brilliant continuous development, which led to the proud heights of Klitias, Euphronios, Meidias. Its producers may be unreservedly described as Greeks: Hellas has come into being. However primitive the civilization of this early Greece may have been, however patriarchal is the picture which Homer, the great genius of this period, gives us of this world, however much the works of art described by him point to Mycenean reminiscences and Phoenician importation, yet in the department of ceramics the art of this time was thoroughly original and highly developed, and it is from the vases that this early phase gets its name.

We should like to have a glimpse of the origin of the Geometric style, but its beginnings are shrouded in darkness. It cannot be regarded as simply a descendant of the pre-Mycenean Geometric pottery, which in outlying parts continued throughout the Bronze Age; for in its ‘varnish’ technique, its forms and decoration, it is totally different from those primitive vessels. As little is it a direct continuation of the Mycenean style, from which it took over the technique of painting. However much towards the end of its development the latter inclined to decoration in bands and the geometrizing of ornament, it was an outworn poor style that arose out of schematizing of living forms, in complete contrast with the clear concise Geometric style, which consistently unfolds and exhausts its individuality.

Naturally the Mycenean style did not disappear abruptly from the face of the earth, and there are transitional forms, which cannot be nicely divided. They must not be too highly estimated; they are, it is true, at the beginning of the new development, but do not influence it. Thus the ‘Salamis’ vases, and their parallels from Athens, Nauplia, and Assarlik in Southern Asia Minor, show this transition, retaining in part Mycenean forms like the stirrup vase, and Mycenean ornaments like the spiral, but being in fact an insignificant ware, of bad workmanship and meagre decoration. More interesting is the survival of Mycenean traditions in Crete, the home of the Minoan style, and in the Argolid, the chief seat of late Mycenean civilization: certain vase-shapes, hatched triangles, concentric circles and semi-circles on the shoulder are retained from the old style.

From these and other Mycenean reminiscences the unfolding of the new style cannot be explained any more than by a revival of pre-Mycenean Geometric styles. We must rather bring in, to explain the phenomenon, those movements of peoples, the driving out of southern Mycenean civilization by races advancing from the North, and the new mixture of blood, which strengthened and made dominant the northern European element. Though the Dorians did not develop the style as conspicuously as other tribes, there arose out of the ferment caused by their appearance on the scene the new creative vigour, the Greek element proper, which, out of the frozen traditions of the mainland and the lifeless relics of Mycenean art created a new style and a firm basis for a fine development.

The Geometric style makes a virtue of the necessities of rude beginnings; out of the simple decorative material at its disposal, it creates a rich system. Angular patterns, rows of dots, strokes, ‘fish-bones,’ zig-zags, crosses, stars, hooked crosses, triangles, rhombi, hook maeanders, maeanders broken up in different ways, maeander systems, chequers, net patterns are most common; alongside of them are circles and rosettes neatly made with the compass. The wavy line, which like the snake edged with dots perhaps comes from Mycenean polyps, takes a second place; all other free ornamentation is eschewed; the place of continuous spirals is taken by circles connected by tangents. Thus the ornamentation appears to be steeped in mathematics, and the same is the case with the representation of living beings. Man and animal alike appear in stylized silhouettes, which bring the various parts of the body into the simplest possible scheme, and set them off sharply against one another. Thus the human breast appears as an inverted triangle and is shown frontally, but the legs and head are in profile. The head, which is only emancipated from the silhouette style in the succeeding period, already often has a space reserved in it to indicate the eye. As a rule the human body is represented naked, while towards the end of the period, the instances of clothing, especially of women, become more numerous. There has been division of opinion as to whether this nudity reproduces actual life. That is certainly not the case. “This is the nudity of the primitive artist, of the abstract linear style. It is not man as he actually is, but the concept ‘man’ which is to be rendered, and clothes are no part of this concept.” (Furtwängler). These oldest Greek representations of man are not, properly speaking, reproductions of nature, but a kind of mathematical formulæ;, which gradually in the course of centuries of fresh observation of

PLATE X.

[Fig. 18]. ATTIC GEOMETRIC AMPHORA (DIPYLON CLASS).

[Fig. 19].

GEOMETRIC AMPHORA, PROBABLY ATTIC (BLACK DIPYLON CLASS).

nature become richer, corporeal, living, spiritual. Animal representation begins also in the same formulistic manner. The choice is in contrast with the Minoan animal world: there is complete absence of the Oriental animal world of fancy; we only see the Northern fauna; horses, roes, goats, storks, geese. The animals stand upright, graze, or rest with neck turned round. The technique is always that of the pure silhouette; only the birds often, as in the pre-Mycenean and late Mycenean styles (Figs. [4] and [15]), show hatched or cross-hatched inner drawing of the body.

These geometric ornaments and abstract silhouettes of men and animals form the complete stock out of which the artist of the period provides for the decoration of his vases. With them he fills the bands into which he loves to divide the vase (Fig. [18]); or at all events the shoulder or handle band, constructively the most important, in which case he covers the lower part of the vase with black (Fig. [19]) or with parallel rings (Fig. [23]). The bands, the breadth of which is varied, are filled in two ways. Either we have continuous ornaments, and processions of animals, chorus dancers, warriors, chariots and horses, which in this style are essentially nothing but ornament; or he divides the bands, and particularly the handle bands (Fig. [19]) vertically into rectangular fields, metopes as they are called. The metope naturally takes a different scheme of filling the space from the band; if the latter prefers a continuous series, the former requires ornaments complete in themselves, like circles and rosettes, or in the case of figures, the antithetical group, the heraldic opposition of two different fields of figures, or of two figures in the same field. The figures connected by compulsion of space are then more closely united by a central motive, and there arise ornamental compositions not at all drawn from actual life, e.g. two birds both holding in their beaks a fish or a snake, two horses with crossed fore-legs, rearing towards each other, tied to a tripod, or held by a man with a bridle, two roes with raised fore-legs leaning against a tree. Band and metope with their compulsory schematism no longer suffice for the growing need of representation: in the large vases the chief band is often made very high, or in the upper part of the vase a rectangle adorned with ornament or figures is left out from the surrounding black: thus arises the vase with special field for subjects.

Legend, which in this period found its brilliant expression in the Epics of Homer and Hesiod, is still very much in the background in these vase-paintings. Centaurs only begin to be represented on late Geometric vases. Scenes such as the embarkation on the bowl from Thebes (Fig. [21]) cannot be interpreted otherwise than mythically, as the rape of Helen by Paris or of Ariadne by Theseus, since on Geometric bronze fibulæ from Boeotia it is certain that legendary scenes are intended. The battle scenes too, with their duellists surrounded by spectators and their fights on a large scale by land and sea, must be inspired by the Heroic Saga. But far more numerous are the scenes of daily life, which are connected with the sepulchral purpose of the vases. We see the dead man lying on the bed of state, covered with a big cloth; men, women, and children, with arms raised to their heads in token of grief, are standing, sitting and kneeling around him; we see the bier placed on the hearse, and amid loud lamentation of the populace driven to the cemetery, while, in honour of the deceased, chariot-races and mimic battles are represented and dances are performed to the sound of flutes and lyres.

As the human form is rendered without any feeling for bodily shape, so all the representations are without any spatial sense. Chariot floors and table surfaces are not fore-shortened, the breast of the dead man lying on the bier

PLATE XI.

[Fig. 20]. UPPER HALF OF A DIPYLON GRAVE-VASE.

[Fig. 21]. ‘THE RAPE OF HELEN,’ ON A BOWL FROM THEBES.

is represented in front view, the covering of the corpse is visible in its complete extent, as if it hung down upon it; in the case of pairs of horses the off horse is simply moved forward and represented smaller; masses of men are rendered by files of similar figures; figures to be thought of as in the background, e.g. the hinder rows in the Helen bowl (Fig. [21]) are placed high up. The space, which contains the figures, is an ideal tectonic space, the surface of the vase to be adorned. Where the figures do not suffice to fill this space, the Geometric artist regards it as a gap in the decoration of the vase and fills the void with dots, rows of zig-zags, hooked crosses, rosettes with a central point, and actually paints birds or fishes between the legs of horses or between the chariot and the bier which rests upon it (Fig. [20]).

This even covering of the surface gives the vases of this period a carpet-like appearance, and this textile impression is strengthened by the geometry of the ornamentation, by the angular stylization of the living beings, by the decorative schemes and the division into bands. But on this account to derive the whole style from the imitation of works of the loom would be a mistake; the stylistic limitations of the style cannot be identified straight off with the technical limitation of weaving. As in all primitive civilizations so in the formation of the Geometric vase style, simple linear patterns may have been taken over from weaving and plaiting: but this is not the case with circles and rosettes, and anyhow such a consistent and systematic perfection as that of the Geometric vase style is inconceivable as an imitation of a foreign technique.

Greek ceramic art never completely lost this ‘textile’ character, and never quite renounced the Geometric school through which it passed, though by centuries of labour it freed itself from the defects and crudities of that school. Vase-figures long exhibit their origin out of the ornamental silhouette; the decorative schemes of arrangement in rows and of antithetic groups are always breaking out afresh; the principle of using up the space is applied superficially for some time and only gradually refined; the decoration in bands subsists for a long time beside the vases with a pictorial field, and remains of it exist till late; the disinclination for deepening the field, based on a correct structural feeling, goes through the whole history of Greek vases and keeps the ornamental figure world of the vases always at a distance from the much less constrained world of free painting.

The Geometric vases have not merely a historical meaning, but a value of their own. They are not a preliminary stage, but something complete. In them Greek art in true Greek fashion worked out a thought; expressed itself for the first time in a classical way, if the phrase may be used; out of a clumsy rustic style with poor ornamentation developed vases of technical perfection, compact and clear in form, consistently thought out in the decoration now lavishly, now sparingly spread over them, in their austere beauty true children of the Greek genius.

But this style did not put out everywhere equally fine flowers. It was not, like the late Mycenean, an ‘imperial’ style, but, from the first—and this is significant for Greek art—differentiated and conditioned by locality; each region had its own manufacture of vases, and its own Geometric style. Already the lead is taken by that place, which later was to drive out of the field all competitors, viz., Athens. The Dipylon vases—the name usually given to Attic Geometric vases from the fact that most of them were found in the cemetery before the Dipylon Gate,—rise in form, technique and decoration to the greatest perfection and highest richness. In the magnificent amphoræ, as much as two metres in height, which are worthy of their monumental use as tomb decoration, the Geometric style perhaps reaches its culmination; in the so-called black Dipylon vases, often only sparingly decorated on the shoulder or neck and otherwise covered black, we get already an effect of colour which became popular much later; the stock of forms is ampler, the maeander more developed, the delight in telling a story and in representing a scene greater than in other Geometric styles. Beside the Dipylon there is a second site in Attica, Eleusis, though not so important; Boeotia too must be mentioned, the pottery of which makes a provincial impression, and is dependent in forms, patterns and subjects on Attica and the Aegean islands, as also that of the neighbouring Eretria in Euboea.

The prototypes of the big Boeotian and Eretrian amphoræ with high stem and broad neck have been found particularly in Delos and Rheneia, richly ornamented vases ‘de luxe,’ in which the painting is laid on a white slip. In the same place, where the cult of Apollo had a great attraction, several other Geometric classes were also found, among them the precursors of the art which flourished in the 7th century and which is usually ascribed to the island of Melos. On the Delian vases horses and human representations occur, but generally in this class there is a disinclination to represent figures. The same disinclination and the frequent use of a light slip characterize the pottery of the Dorian island of Thera, which developed a very definite though sober and monotonous Geometric style that seems to have obstinately persisted till well into the 7th century. The rich finds of other classes bear witness to an active trade with the mainland, other Cyclades, and the Ionic East, the pottery of which has many points of contact with the Cycladic. We know it from Miletus and other places on the Asiatic coast, but above all from the island of Rhodes. The Rhodian Geometric vases are distinguished from the Cycladic by the absence of the light slip, and seem in spite of many points of contact never to have reached the same level. An isolated vegetable ornament, the so-called palm-tree, points to relations with Cyprus. Cross-hatched rhombi and birds are very much in vogue; they appear also in loose arrangement on the ‘Bird kylikes,’ which in post-Geometric times extended from Rhodes over the Ionian region and so made their way to the Greek mainland, Italy and Sicily.

The most important Peloponnesian manufactures are: (1) that of Sparta, which now to some extent adopts the white slip later predominant; (2) that of Argos, which soon discards its Mycenean reminiscences and develops on parallel lines with the Attic ware without attaining to the heights and richness of the Dipylon vases; (3) above all, the so-called Protocorinthian.

This Geometric style, which next to the Attic had the greatest future before it, seems to be at home in the Northern Argolid ([p. 34]). Its early Geometric beginnings we do not know. It is akin to its Argive neighbour in many points, in the scantiness of its stock of forms, in shapes like the metallic krater with a stirrup-handle. Unfortunately little has been left to us of the large-sized vases, kraters, cauldrons, amphoræ and jugs. The two-handled cup (Fig. [23]), the round box, the globular oil-flask, the deep drinking-cup, the jug with flat bottom (Fig. [33]) are the favourite smaller shapes. The limitation of the decoration to the upper margin, and the decoration of the rest with parallel stripes is characteristic. This ware was more exported than any other Geometric class; it entered the southern Argolid, went by way of Corinth and Eleusis to Boeotia and Delphi, and was exported to Aegina and Thera, Italy and Sicily. On Italian soil, in the Euboean

PLATE XII.

[Fig. 22]. RHODIAN GEOMETRIC JUG.

[Fig. 23]. PROTOCORINTHIAN GEOMETRIC SKYPHOS.

colony of Kyme, it certainly founded a branch factory, which quickly took on a local character and exported in its turn; but in various other places also the style evoked local imitations.

The Protocorinthian style owed its brilliant future both to the Geometric foundation, and, as will appear, to the strong influence of Cretan Art. In Crete, after the settlement of the Dorians in the island, no definite Geometric style was formed: the Mycenean traditions were too strong and the relations with the East too close. After the purely Geometric vases, among which wide-bellied amphoræ without a neck are common, there soon appear vases showing Cyprian influence, particularly small jugs with concentric circles on the body (precursors of [Fig. 27]); thus a pitcher from Kavusi, which by an exception has figures on it (a charioteer and mourning women in a metope-like arrangement) is apparently, in shape as well as in the ornament which consists of a row of ‘S’s’ on their backs and the un-Geometric drawing of its silhouettes, dependent on similar Cyprian models.

Crete with its loosely-rooted Geometric style took up the new elements more freely than other localities, where at first they are placed side by side with the native ones, like the palm-tree on Rhodian vases, the Cyprian circles on Attic and Protocorinthian jugs, the precursors of the tongue pattern on Attic and Theran vases, the unsystematic rays on Attic and Protocorinthian ware, the running spiral probably borrowed from metal work on Protocorinthian and Theran vases. Moreover, figured representations from an alien world of ideas creep into the fixed Geometric systems, as for instance the two lions devouring a man on a Dipylon vase, the goddess flanked by two animals on a Boeotian amphora, the fabulous creatures on Rhodian vases.

These foreign elements, which have their root in Oriental art, are the harbingers of a complete revolution, and in them is heralded the end of the Geometric style. It is obvious that a decorative style like the Geometric could have no future: its possibilities were quickly exhausted, even where the style was most richly developed. Its dissolution would have come, even if superior civilization with richer methods of decoration had not been in close contact of trade and intercourse with this early Greek world, and exercised on it a persistent influence. The Cretans and Eastern Greeks lived in the immediate neighbourhood of Egypt and Asia, the islands and the mainland were united to the East by active trade relations. In particular Phoenician merchants, while the Geometric style was flourishing, handed on to the Greeks the products of Oriental art, as both the Epic and the finds testify. Nor did the Greeks remain at home either, but had long become a seafaring people; Attic, Boeotian and Protocorinthian painters proudly place representations of ships on Geometric vases; the statistics of the finds of the various Geometric wares show a constantly growing trade intercourse. Colonisation too has already begun, and is ever expanding; according to the earliest vase finds Syracuse, Kyme, and perhaps also Massilia and the Black Sea coast received settlers, while their mother-cities still had Geometric pottery. Since Syracuse was founded in the second half of the 8th century and its oldest graves contain late Geometric vases, we obtain an approximate date for the end of the Geometric style.

The objects of Oriental Art, which were brought before the eyes of the Greeks by this active intercourse, powerfully stimulated their fancy. The crowd of decorative motives from vegetation, the world of fantastic animals, and the superiority of Oriental Art in the rendering of life, drew Greek vase-painting out of Geometric uniformity and pointed it to new paths.

PLATE XIII.

[Fig. 24]. ATTIC GEOMETRIC KYLIX.

Figs. 25 & 26. CRETAN JUGS IN THE FIRST ORIENTALISED STYLE.

CHAPTER III.
THE SEVENTH CENTURY

AS the Oriental motives pour into the Greek world, a new development begins, which in the details of its course is still hard to grasp, the collision of the native Geometric style with Oriental influence, the fusion of both elements into a new unity, and the growth of the archaic style. In contrast with the quiet and consistent unfolding of Geometric style, the process to anyone who goes deep into its details takes on the character of a restless fermentation, and an almost dramatic tension. It occupies, roughly speaking, the 7th century. Without forgetting how arbitrary divisions in the history of Art must always be, let us here treat as one the period from the end of the Geometric style to the abandonment of filling ornament, the change in technique of clay and colouring, and the formation of the established body of black-figured types.

The smelting process took on a different character in the different regions, according to the tenacity with which the old style was retained, and the intensity of the contact with the East. In most places there follows first a period of hesitation and experimentalism, out of which finally the new style is formed. Nowhere does the Oriental element simply take the place of the Greek Geometric; the acquisitions of the old style, the fixed vase shapes, the principles of decoration, and the technique, remain and are further developed. Greek pottery was much too highly and richly developed, too firmly rooted, to find it necessary to imitate Oriental clay vases. The stimuli were of much more general nature; they are chiefly visible in the ornamentation and pictorial types, they are taken from metal vases and richly embroidered materials, from costly carpets, articles of jewellery, engraved gems, and other fine things, which the foreign trader or the seafaring Greek brought from the Near or Far East or saw with his own eyes abroad. It became apparent to him, that the Geometric style was really poverty-stricken and mathematical. The feeling for finely-drawn line and vivid reproduction of life awoke in view of the freer Art of the East; the Greek made the Oriental models his own and created out of them and the mathematical element a new Art. Not all stimuli come direct from the East; perhaps only comparatively few, which were then passed on, were constantly altered and took on varied local colour. It looks as if the stream of Oriental influence took two different routes, one by way of the Greek East (Rhodes, Samos, Miletus) and another by way of Crete, which evidently had a strong influence on the Cyclades and Peloponnesus.

In Crete Phoenician metal objects have been found, which were imported during the Geometric period, and the Cretan Geometric pottery soon takes up motives of decoration borrowed from the Oriental or Orientalizing metal industry. The row of ‘S’s,’ which plays a part in Geometric bronzes, appears as we have seen on the Kavusi jug ([p. 27]). Its climax is the cable pattern (guilloche), which is obviously borrowed from Phoenician metal vessels (Fig. [26]). The tongue pattern (Fig. [ 25-27]) which surrounds the lower part and the shoulder of the vases, like the rays similarly used (Fig. [ 31-35]), goes back ultimately to Egyptian plant calyces. The connection with bronze patterns is fully proved by the dots often placed on the ornaments, by the technique of adding white on black painted vases (Fig. [29])

PLATE XIV.

[Fig. 27]. CRETAN MINIATURE JUG.

[Fig. 28]. THE FLIGHT FROM THE CAVE OF POLYPHEMUS, FROM A JUG FROM ÆGINA.

which aims at a metallic effect, and by the change of the vase shapes. These often get a quite non-ceramic appearance (Fig. [25]), and in their rounding and contouring, especially by the emphasis on the foot (Figs. [25] and [27]), they are in contrast with the Geometric forms. The Praisos jug (Fig. [26]) is obviously under Cypriot influence, as is the delicate Berlin jug (Fig. [27]), in which a previously described class ([p. 27]) reaches its high water mark. The Praisos pitcher (Fig. [25]) to the Orientalizing patterns enumerated already adds the hook spirals, which are characteristic of the 7th century, and the Berlin jug adds also the volute and the palmette. The plastic head which crowns this little bottle, and is entirely inspired by the Egypto-Phoenician ideas of form, inaugurates a new era in the representation of man. We are now in the time when Greek sculpture was born, in that notable period when Greek art under the influence of Oriental art took to the chisel, to enter on a century of development which ended in giving shape to the loftiest and most delicate creations that can move the spirit of man. It is noteworthy that Greek tradition embodied the beginnings of this development in a Cretan, Daedalus, and to a kinsman of this ancestor of all Greek sculptors it traced back the invention of the great art of painting, without the influence of which we cannot conceive of vase-paintings henceforward.

The first period of the transitional style betrays little of this influence. The reproduction of living beings is dominated by the decorative figures of the East, especially monsters and fabulous beings, which now make their entry into Greek art, and exercise a powerful attraction not only on plastic art, but on poetic and mythopœic fancy. Thus the Geometric silhouette is superseded. If even the preceding age had felt the need of leaving void a hole to indicate the eye, now the head is completely rendered by an outline and made lifelike by interior drawing (Fig. [30]). The next stage is that the whole body also is rendered in contour. To make the transition plain, we show here a vase-fragment, the Cretan origin of which is not established, but which must be in close connection with Cretan art, the Ram jug from Aegina (Fig. [28]). The animal frieze, with its hook spirals, dot rosettes, rhombi and triangles to fill the space, is characteristic of older Oriental art; the drawing of the rams is far beyond Geometric technique; in the body too the silhouette is given up, and indication of the hide is attempted. This animal frieze is no longer an end in itself: by the men clinging to them the ornamental rams become mythical rams, the rams of the Odyssey. The fugitives are not very closely connected with their saviours, and the giant must have been more than blind not to notice them. But on the other hand the artist has drawn them very clearly, has put both arms and both legs in view of the spectator, and even, where a small detail would not otherwise have shown well, made a small nick in the belly of the ram. This shows how the artist of the period could with difficulty do without a clear outline.

These attempts are perfected in the outlined figure of a plate from Praisos, which is certainly Cretan (Fig. [29]). The childishly disproportioned structure has now become a clear organism of genuine Greek stamp, full of excellent observation of nature; the ornamentally constrained picture becomes now a free version of a legend, which however cannot be interpreted with certainty, till the white object under the sea-monster has been explained. It is most likely that we may see in it the foot of a female figure filling the left half of the plate, perhaps Thetis, who escapes from the attacks of Peleus by changing into a fish. The interior incised lines in the body of the sea-monster are a novelty, which the ceramic art has developed

PLATE XV.

[Fig. 29]. HERAKLES AND SEA-MONSTER (?) FROM A CRETAN PLATE.

[Fig. 30]. ARGIVE KRATER WITH THE SIGNATURE OF ARISTONOTHOS: SEVENTH CENTURY.

independently ([p. 37]). But on the other hand the advance in drawing and the technical rendering of form, the outline of Peleus, the light colour of the woman, the reddish brown tint of the rider on the reverse, cannot be explained apart from the influence of free painting, whose oldest stages are stated to have been outlining with progressive drawing of interior details, monochromy (i.e. outline drawing with a filling of colour) and distinction of sex by colour. After an interval of several centuries wall-painting must have sprung up again and flourished in Crete, different to be sure in essentials from the Minoan, rather influenced by the East like the decorative art of the time. In spite of the tendency to represent painting as ‘invented’ in Greece, Greek tradition reluctantly admits that this art was indigenous and highly developed in Egypt long before.

The bloom of Cretan art seems not to have outlasted the 7th century. Finds give out, and tradition expressly testifies to the migration of Cretan sculptors to the Argolid, a district which also took over the inheritance of Cretan vase painting.

Of the two chief centres of Argive Geometric vase fabrication, one which is to be sought in the region of Argos and Tiryns cannot be followed out very clearly. The oldest Greek vase signed by an artist, the krater of the potter Aristonothos with the blinding of Polyphemus (Fig. [30]), seems from the shape of the vase to belong to this class. The complicated shape of the circle of rays, the breaking up of the head silhouette, the juxtaposition of the traditional sea-fight with the legendary scene, are typical of the early Orientalizing period; certain parallels with the late Mycenean Warrior vase ([p. 15]) perhaps justify the conclusion, that remains of the old wall-painting had an influence on the style. Like the Aristonothos vase, some stirrup-handled kraters with metope decorations continue Argive Geometric traditions. These vases, however, are exclusively found in the West (Syracuse) and were probably made there; they do not give faithful reflection of their Argive prototypes. A krater with tall foot and ornamentation in bands, found at the Argive Heraion, representing the rescue of Deianeira, with plentiful use of ‘monochromy,’ is too isolated to make a picture of this Orientalizing pottery possible.

It cannot have played a leading part, but must soon have been put in the shade by its near neighbour and rival. For that the so-called Protocorinthian fabrication is also at home in the Argolid is proved by the fact that the chief places, where the ware is found, are Argos and Aegina, and that quantities of small and hardly exportable ware are found at various places in the district. The alphabet of the inscriptions agrees with this locality, and so does the style, which leads up to the Corinthian, whence the name has been given, as well as the fact that the great trading-centre of Corinth looked after the sale of the wares; for the area in which they were sold is identical with that of the Corinthian vases. On account of these close relations with Corinth, the home of the Protocorinthian vases has been sought with great probability in the neighbouring town of Sicyon, of which we are told that it was the place to which Cretan artists migrated, that it was the birthplace of Greek painting and seat of a flourishing metal industry, so that we are able to account for three ingredients of the new style. For the Protocorinthian style of the 7th century gave the most delicate development of Cretan ‘Daedalic’ types, particularly near its end; fixed a clear style of figure representation and an ample store of types, and developed its vase-shapes, system of decoration and technique, under the influence of metal patterns, more severely, precisely and richly than any

PLATE XVI.

[Fig. 31]. Fig. 32.

PROTOCORINTHIAN LEKYTHOI WITH BATTLE-SCENE AND SLAUGHTER OF THE CENTAURS.

[Fig. 33]. PROTOCORINTHIAN JUG OF POST-GEOMETRIC STYLE FROM ÆGINA. EARLY SEVENTH CENTURY.

other contemporary centre of fabrication. In it the vase history of the post-Geometric century culminates.

Even in the Geometric period which preceded it ([p. 26]) (the sparing ornamentation of which is in contrast with the Dipylon pottery and its greater delight in using the brush) metallic influence can be traced; the simple running spiral certainly comes from incised bronzes. The delicate two-handled cups closely connected with the Geometric style (Fig. [23]), with their well-cleansed clay, improved glaze colour baked black to red, and the reduction of the walls almost to the thinness of paper, can only have been produced in competition with the metal industry; and as a matter of fact delicate silver vases of the same shape have been found along with the clay copies of them in Etruscan graves. The lower part of the cups is at first painted black, but soon it is surrounded with the circle of rays, which according to the ideas of the new period emphasizes and makes clear the tectonic character of that part of the vase. This motive also appears in the Geometric decoration of the flat-bottomed jugs (Fig. [33]), the unguent pots which show Cyprian influence in their oldest globular shape, the kylikes, round boxes and other shapes, though not always in the typical place, and often also combined with other ornaments (Figs. [30] and [32]). In spite of its Geometrical treatment and its truly Greek close combination with the system of decoration, it does not disown the impulse it owes to Oriental patterns ([p. 30]). The Protocorinthian style also introduced its doubling (Fig. [32]), which still survives in the 6th century (Fig. [98]). The cable pattern, borrowed as has been shown from Oriental metal-work, drives out the ‘S’s’ and the running spiral. As a handle ornament it gets a rich enlargement (Fig. [32]), the fine stylization of which, no doubt, was first produced in metal industry. Of the greatest importance is the adoption of loops, volutes, running tendrils and friezes of arcs, which in combination with the palmette appear on the wall of the vase or as an upper stripe, and from simple, often loosely stylized beginnings, expand with the help of the lotus-flower into a fine loop and flower ornament (‘Rankengeschling’), as in Figs. [31], [32], [35]. That this ornamentation, in spite of its rigid stylization, was felt by the Greeks to belong to the living vegetable world, is shown e.g. by the volute-complex, behind which the hunter (on the lowest stripe of Fig. 31) waits to catch the hare, as well as behind the naturally drawn bush (on Fig. 36); this shows that the ‘volute tree’ (Fig. [34]) flanked by two sphinxes, is thought of as a real tree. On the other hand the ornaments in the field are quite as meaningless as in the older style: to those used by Geometric artists are now added the hook spiral, and the rosette treated as a dotted star, two ornaments we have seen already on the Ram jug (Fig. [28]); at first they are independent and can be used to form friezes, later they become less and less prominent (Figs. [32] and [34], cp. also Fig. 28). Two further decorative motives lead us back into the region of metal-work, the scale-pattern extending over the whole body of the vase (Fig. [38]), which so often occurs in incised metal-work, and the tongue ornament, the typical decoration of bronze vessels, which on clay vases as well often rises over the foot in place of the kindred rays, but most commonly finishes the shoulder where it meets the neck. Both motives have already been met with in Crete, as applied on a black ground. The black ground technique of the Praisos jug (Fig. [26]) is very popular with Protocorinthian artists, goes alongside of the clay-ground vases for the whole period, and supplies richly coloured examples decorated with figures and ornaments of fine effect, particularly in combination with a new technique, which appears in the advanced style,

PLATE XVII.

[Fig. 34]. BELLEROPHON AND THE CHIMAERA FROM A PROTOCORINTHIAN LEKYTHOS.

[Fig. 35]. PROTOCORINTHIAN JUG, KNOWN AS THE CHIGI VASE.

being specially typical of scale and tongue ornamentation, that of incision. It is perhaps idle to inquire into its invention: it is more important to establish the fact, that it was first consistently and systematically applied to the black-ground vessels of the Protocorinthian artists, who were also famed for metal-work, and gave a new stamp to the style at a time when the East used simple brush technique almost exclusively. The incised line is always combined with the addition of coloured and particularly red details.

The technical advance, which in some measure replaced the influence of the rising art of painting by that of metal-working, is shown more plainly in the figured representations, particularly the friezes of animals, which the vase-painters, inspired by Oriental metal ware and embroideries, with ever greater zest employ on their vases. Beside the birds, stags and roes, beside the dogs pursuing hares, with which a lower stripe could be easily filled, come new animals, for which they are chiefly indebted to Oriental art, bull, goat, bear, ram, wild-goat, lion and panther, sphinx, siren, griffin, and other hybrids. These creatures appear in quite definite types, which admit of little variety: it is characteristic that the panther’s head is drawn in front view, perhaps through an abbreviation of a heraldic double panther; and this rule is devoutly observed through the whole period of decoration with animal friezes. An indication of this is that the decorative animals never become pure outlines like the human figures, but after a period of partial silhouette ([p. 31]), return to the complete silhouette, as satisfying better the requirements of decoration. This return became possible through the use of the incised line, by the help of which interior drawing could be added on a black ground, and the effect of the figures was further enhanced by the addition of details in red. This is an important innovation in the history of Greek vase-painting. The general effect of the vase is completely altered by the decorative play of colour, which extends also to the ornamentation, and takes on that gay many-coloured aspect which is so characteristic of the older archaic period, and which is only dropped late in the 6th century. The new colour system does not aim at realism; it makes prominent for decorative purposes single parts of the animal body, especially the neck and belly.

The drawing of the human figure proceeds on other lines than that of animals. In consequence of the new development of the art of painting ([p. 33]), it makes a fresh start. First we have the vase of Aristonothos (Fig. [30]); the next stage is represented by the Ram vase (Fig. [28]); the desire of distinguishing the lighter skin of women from that of men leads to the tinting in brown of the male body. But in the formation of the figure types certainly it was not only painting that stood godmother, the metal worker’s art must also have asserted its influence; the kinship with Cretan and Argive flat bronze reliefs and metal engraved work is too great, the sharp clear-cut types too much in the spirit of bronze technique, for it to be possible to postulate an independent development. To this corresponds the fact that the outlines of the figures are accompanied by incised lines on polychrome vases with black ground, on the finest of the later lekythoi (oil-flasks) and on the Chigi jug (Fig. [35]). This technique is repeated on the big two-handled cups with finely stylised figured representations, which finally accomplish an important advance already foreshadowed by small and hasty specimens: the dark silhouette with incised interior detail, prevalent in the style of the animal friezes, and along with it certain details like the circular rendering of the eye, are taken over for the representation of male figures.

PLATE XVIII.

Figs. 36 & 37. SCENES FROM THE CHIGI JUG: HARE AND LION HUNT; CHARIOT.

This adoption, which only takes place at the end of the development, and makes the Protocorinthian style the starting point of black-figured vase painting, does not unite heterogeneous elements. For man and decorative animal are equivalent in their juxtaposition, and beside the free mythological scenes there is a series of representations, which seems to have grown straight out of the animal frieze. The Centaur, the old Greek forest monster, joins the animals; winged demons in the remarkable scheme of running with bent knee (pointing to the metope treatment) are also placed amongst them; kneeling archers shoot arrows at them, hunters and combatants pursue them, Bellerophon rides on Pegasus against the Chimaera, Herakles fights against the Centaurs. Purely human scenes, like the favourite Duel (Fig. [ 43]), are simply flanked by animals. The addition of figures in rows and overlapping makes this simple combat into a battle; wounded fall, corpses are hotly fought over, auxiliaries hurry up. The artist always in these cases gives prominence to the finely decorated shields, the pride of Argive metal industry. Like the rows of fighting men, the other frieze-like compositions, the processions of riders and chariot-races, the hunting scenes and chase of the hare, thanks to charming observation of detail, make a direct appeal which is strange for such early art. The bushes in the hare-hunt of the Chigi jug (Fig. [36]) show the awakening of the landscape element, which to be sure is always a rarity on vases and must have played a larger part in free painting. Moreover, the varying colouring of the animals on the stripe in question, which appears also on a frieze of riders (Fig. [31]) and continues in Corinthian painting, must come from the same source, whereas the bold front view of the Sphinx head (Fig. [37]) like that of the panther head and the Corinthian quadriga, was attempted for the first time in an ornamental band. Hand in hand with the enlivening of the friezes goes the suppression of field ornamentation: it is only sparingly applied, limited to the animal friezes or entirely absent. At times a lizard (Fig. [34]), a swan or a monkey comes into the figured scenes.

Of course this is all devoid of meaning; for in spite of all progress and freer treatment the style is merely concerned with the decoration of a surface; ‘exigencies of space’ are its supreme law. These control the type of the human figure, for even where it is not essentially an ornamental scheme, like the runner with bent knee, it fills from top to bottom the stripe assigned to it, extends its breast frontally, and reaches out its arms, as if it were yearning for a frame. And as the body avoids all perspective, so the head in profile shows its most expressive part, the eye surmounted by the brow, in full extent, and renders the long hair falling down over the neck as smooth surface, and the curly forehead hair as spiral. There is no rendering of folds to show depth in the drapery, which now the artist in true Greek fashion treats in an abstract way, unlike reality. The human figure remains a type, a homogeneous constituent part of the stripes, which are entirely designed for filling space. It matters little, if between chariot-race and lion-hunt on the Chigi jug (Fig. [37]) a double Sphinx is inserted as central motive, or Bellerophon lays the Chimaera low in presence of two Sphinxes (Fig. [34]); if close to the lion-hunt in the same stripe, Hermes leads the three goddesses before the fair Trojan shepherd, and if the names of the personages are entered in the field with big letters as a kind of ornamentation by way of filling: the incipient delight in telling a story is taken at once into the service of filling the field.

As the human figure still appears almost completely on a par with the ornamental animal figure, so there is little trace of any superior weight being attached to the scenic representations in the decorative system. Where the

PLATE XIX.

[Fig. 38]. PROTOCORINTHIAN OR CORINTHIAN JUG.

[Fig. 39]. Fig. 40.

CORINTHIAN ALABASTRON AND ARYBALLOS.

painter employs them, it is true he puts at their disposal the chief frieze and often one at the base in addition, but he frames them with prominent stripes of ornament or animals, and side by side with the narrative vases purely decorative ones are still produced. The presence of several animal friezes on a single vase (e.g. on jugs of the shape of Fig. 35) is not uncommon; like band ornamentation in general, it is in contrast with the practice of the Geometric period ([p. 25]) and is probably to be traced to a strong influence of Oriental textile art. For the most severely shaped black vases, which are nearest to the bronze models that we possess (Fig. [38]), do not always adopt this fundamentally non-tectonic breaking up of the body of the vase.

The close connection of the shapes with metal-work has been already proved in the case of the cups of early Orientalizing style (Fig. [23]), and goes through the whole history of the fabric, and even where the models were not immediately copied, gave the vase-shapes a clearness and precision, with which the products of no other manufactory can compete; the Sicyonian-Corinthian school of repoussé work perhaps originated many metal vase-shapes, which were afterwards used in various manufactories. Though the Protocorinthian list of shapes is only known to a small extent, an important change can be established. Beside the jugs of primitive construction (cp. Fig. [33] with [54]) appear later more rounded vessels, the jug with ‘rotelle’ (Fig. [38]) and the wineskin-shaped, the chief example of which (Fig. [35]) with its excellently decorated bands, sometimes black, sometimes in the ground of the clay, shows us the style in a richer and more developed form than any other vase of this fabric. In the same way the little ‘lekythoi’ which are technically often quite exquisite, change their appearance, exchange their old globular shape (Fig. [27]) for a slimmer one with pronounced shoulder, which the caprice of the potter often furnishes with plastic additions, Argive transformations of Cretan ‘Daedalic’ types (Figs. [27] and [31]). And as beside the ‘rotelle’ jug, we have the wineskin-shaped jug, so beside this sort of ‘lekythos’ there is a wineskin-shaped variety with a rough tongue-pattern on the neck (Fig. [ 39]).

The ‘lekythoi’ were the chief exported article, or at least the most favoured grave-offering of the customers abroad. But one cannot call it the favourite shape of Protocorinthian workmanship: it must not be forgotten that we have only an accidental selection of this ware, due to the discovery of two native sanctuaries (the Argive Heraion and the Temple of Aphrodite in Aegina), and many graves in the Argolid, Attica, and Boeotia, in the East (Thera, Rhodes, Asia Minor) and in the West (Sicily, Italy, Carthage). Wherever this ware came it exercised a stimulating influence, and in many places evoked local copies ([p. 52]); more than other districts the West was dominated by this Art. As the oldest Etruscan wall-paintings, those of the Grotta Campana at Veii and the Tomba dei Leoni at Caere, are quite under the influence of Sicyonian-Corinthian painting, so the class called into existence a multitude of imitations in Sicily and Italy, particularly at Kyme.

The extraordinarily wide currency of the ware denotes not merely its superiority, but also that of the trade-centre which exported it. This need not necessarily have been identical with the place of manufacture. Many signs, especially the occurrence of the vases in quantity in the Corinthian colony of Syracuse, point to the fact that the great trading city of Corinth took over the sale of the ware and gradually replaced it by its own products. The vases localized with certainty in Corinth by their alphabet give an immediate continuation of the Protocorinthian, and one

PLATE XX.

[Fig. 41]. ANIMAL FRIEZE FROM AN EARLY CORINTHIAN JUG.

[Fig. 42]. ANIMAL FRIEZE FROM A CORINTHIAN JUG.

can only ask whether this manufacture simply transferred its chief workshops to Corinth or whether Corinth in the closest imitation of late Protocorinthian ware developed a new style, which thanks to the commercial capacity of the Corinthians could drive the older competitor out of the field: its sphere of influence, as we saw, replaces the Protocorinthian, nay, encroaches still further on the Ionian region (Samos, Naukratis, Pontus).

The Corinthian style did not long retain the metallic clearness and precision of its predecessor, neither in its shapes, which for the most part it takes over (Figs. [35], [38], [39], [43],), nor in its decoration, which exhibits the final triumph of the ornamental style. The dark ground technique becomes rarer; the scaly fields continue for a time, white rosettes painted on the black neck and edge are in favour to the end; the indispensable tongue ornament on the shoulder gradually comes to be rendered by the brush. The animal-frieze vases, which are quite in the forefront of the interest, link on to the later Protocorinthian in decoration and in the style of the figures, but soon alter the types in the sense of a broader rendering of form, and the rosettes in the field also show this change. On the common ware, which was turned out along with the good, one gets as a result coarse animals and filling patterns like mere blots; but even technically perfect vases show a strong inclination to overfill the field, which one might bring into causal connexion with the Corinthian textile art famed in antiquity, if the vase picture repudiated the brush technique more than it does.

The composition shows the same intrusion of a strongly decorative element. The heraldic scheme is more prominent than ever. We owe to it the invention of a new ornament, a combination of lotus-flower and palmettes (Fig. [39]), which like the old volute-tree (Fig. [34]) is flanked by two animals. In particular the wineskin-shaped and globular unguent-pots (Figs. [39] and [40]) (Alabastron and Aryballos), the successors of the Protocorinthian unguent-pots, are decorated with it; but even in the stripes, which have not got the ‘palmette and lotus cross,’ there are groups of three animals at a time inspired by the heraldic scheme (Fig. [41]). The list of types grows: beside the quadrupeds appear many birds (e.g. geese, swans, eagles, cocks and owls,) fishes and serpents; a motley series of hybrids, bearded sphinxes, winged lions, winged panthers, tritons and other fabulous creatures are side by side with the favourite winged demons, sphinxes, sirens and griffins. The place of the central ornament is often taken by purely human beings, especially the runner with bent knee, and the goddess of beasts (πὁτνια θἡρων) which in the Oriental patterns are flanked by animals; but also non-ornamental figures, women, riders, grotesque dancers (Figs. [40] and [43]) are found in this place. Thus arises a co-ordination of man and decorative animal similar to that of Protocorinthian art; anyone who has followed on the vases this process, which is characteristic of the 7th century, is not surprised, when in the archaic Corinthian pediment at Corfu mythological scenes appear side by side with the Gorgon flanked by panthers, and when in the representation of the central animal the myth begins to be active.

The non-ornamental human figures in the animal compositions are of course not invented for this purpose, but borrowed from other contexts, scenes of human life, which existed beside the decorative representations and followed the lead of the Protocorinthian precursors. They are certainly more intimately connected with the animal figures. The male figure ([p. 38]) has finally discarded the old outline drawing with brown filling for the animal-frieze technique, black silhouette with incised interior details.

PLATE XXI.

[Fig. 43]. CORINTHIAN SKYPHOS.

[Fig. 44]. ACHILLES AND TROILOS: FROM THE LATE CORINTHIAN FLASK BY TIMONIDAS.

But at the same time the memory of monochromy is not yet quite extinct; the head silhouette is still by preference painted red. When often instead of it the breast and thigh are picked out in red, when in sphinx and siren contour drawing is abandoned, the connection with the animal-frieze style is complete, and the new intrusion of a strong decorative element in this pottery is obvious.

Even the compositions of the figured scenes are under this decorative spell, which, as in the Protocorinthian style, is only broken through by a few gifted masters. The duel flanked by sirens on the Boston cup (Fig. [ 43]) is typical of the older Corinthian style. The warriors and riders are often arranged in processions, collected in big battle-scenes; the grotesque revellers and dancers with extended posterior, prototypes of the satyrs, fill whole friezes with their reckless antics; the girls take hands for the dance. Special legendary scenes are, however, very rare, and when vase-painters like Chares supply names to an ordinary series of riders, this makes clear rather than removes the defect.

This defect to be sure is due to a great extent to the accidental preservation of a series of vases, which are for the most part careless decorative work intended for the export trade, so that we may form erroneous ideas. The neighbourhood of Corinth itself has supplied some fine specimens with a marked character of their own, which bridge the gap between the Chigi vase and later Corinthian vase-painting (Fig. [ 64-67]), e.g. kylikes where, in the interior field framed by tongue pattern ornament, are fine Gorgon masks and human busts, and especially two works signed by the painter Timonidas. The flask with the story of Troilos (Fig. [44]) shares with the Chigi vase the contrast of colour important for Corinthian painting. The flesh of the women is light as a set-off to that of the men, the chiton of the man sets off his nude parts, the shield its bearer, the front horse the hinder of the pair. The delight in the landscape element, the fine steeds, and big inscriptions, points back to Protocorinthian style. But nothing is left of the ornaments scattered about the field but a small palmette, the composition has become looser, there is much less tendency to cover the surface in the drawing of the figures: the old scheme of the kneeling runner has its echo in the Achilles lurking in ambush, but it is ingeniously adapted to new use. Thus there is a much freer relation to space, which gives the necessary foundation for the descriptive style. The hunter too, whose outline Timonidas has put on a clay votive tablet unconstrained by the silhouette technique or by the desire for contrast of colour (Fig. [45]), is not crowded by any filling ornaments; the finely drawn youth in the balance of his proportions and the rendering of detail surpasses the wrestler of the Praisos plate (Fig. [29]), and in his broad massive appearance introduces a new rendering of the body. And similarly the dog, coloured bright yellow with appropriate detail, goes far beyond the animal frieze style. One fancies that in this animal eagerly looking up to his master one sees expressed something like feeling.

Like the pinax of Timonidas many other votive tablets of the same find take one out of the stock vase scenes, especially in the delight in landscape, the trees conceived of in their special natures, the cross-section like genre scenes from the workshop of the potter and metal-worker, from mining and sea voyages. The vases, however, show little of those progresses in colouring and spacing, which we must assume in greater measure for the great art of painting. The decisive step in the history of vase painting, which is especially embodied for us by the painter Timonidas, consists in the liberation of the field, in the transition from the ornamental to the pictorial style, in the abandonment of filling ornamentation, which only survives in vegetable

PLATE XXII.

[Fig. 45]. HUNTER AND HOUND. PINAX FROM CORINTH, SIGNED BY TIMONIDAS.

[Fig. 46]. FRIEZE OF AN EARLY PHALERON JUG.

motives suitable to the occasion and scattered birds, serpents, lizards (Figs. [34] and [66]), and in the triumph of figure-subjects over friezes of ornament or animals, which can best be followed in the kraters (Fig. [ 65]). With this step, which is completed in the beginning of the 6th century, we are brought close to the black-figured style proper, which is differentiated by some technical innovations.

But before we pass to that, we have still to follow the transition here described through the other fabrics of the 7th century. We can rapidly pass over Sparta, which as yet produces no ware fit for exportation. The course here is similar to what went on in the Argolid. Beside many specialities one seems to notice kinship with Ionian pottery in the small bands of squares accompanied by dots and the branches on the edge of the kylix, in the placing of similar animals in rows. In what close relation earlier Spartan civilization stood to Ionia, we learn from the history of lyric poetry.

To the three stages, earlier Protocorinthian, later Protocorinthian, older Corinthian, answer the three groups in Attica named respectively after Phaleron, the Nessos vase and Vurvá. The break-up of the most definite of all Geometric styles seems to have taken place in spite of vehement opposition. Details of the Oriental flora and fauna are first assimilated to the old style, and taken unobtrusively into the Geometric system of decoration. In the group named after the finds at Phaleron the new style with marked Phoenician imitations gets the upper hand. To the unsystematic reproduction and application of the new ornaments, now arbitrarily scattered, now ranged in special rows, and so added to the others, succeeds a severer choice, stylization and arrangement; the luxuriant vegetable character of the decoration (Fig. [46]), with which birds and insects are often combined, only lasts for a time. The same experimental hesitation prevails in the figure drawing, which does not go straight from the Geometric silhouette to contour drawing and monochromy, but very soon experiments from time to time in the incised line and added white paint, and in the later Phaleron stage is not sparing of details in red, e.g., for the hair and dress. The progress in the rendering of nature happily can still be followed to some extent in big vases. It leads to a fixed type with a loose outline with ankles, knee-pan, and elbow rendered like ornaments: in the head the big eye in front view dominates at the expense of the forehead, the skull is flat, the aquiline nose is very prominent, the ear is like a volute. Similarly in early Greek sculpture an ornamental conception of the outline and the details of the body is expressed, and casts a light on the conception of ornament as something living and not yet felt to be an abstraction from reality.

The big Phaleron vases also give evidence as to the grouping of the figures, which we have not been able to get from the Protocorinthian vases that have been preserved. Older specimens like the Berlin amphora from Hymettos already fill the greater part of the vase surface with the descriptive frieze, only surrounded by narrow lines of ornaments and animals, and in addition the neck of the amphora is adorned with figured scenes. Even in Geometric times Attic pottery had already given greater scope to the narrative style than other manufactures: in the Phaleron vases it creates an important system of decoration, which is continued in the group of which the Nessos vase is the chief representative, and prevails to the exclusion of everything else in the 6th century.

When the later Phaleron vases re-adopt the full silhouette in animal drawing and extend the technique of incised detail and additions in red to human outline figures, which they often emphasize only to make them stand out from the

PLATE XXIII.

Figs. 47 & 48. HERAKLES AND THE CENTAUR NESSOS; THE GORGONS: NECK AND BODY DESIGNS OF AN ATTIC AMPHORA.

background, they prepare a step, which is completed in the Nessos group, i.e., the taking over of the animal-frieze technique into figure-painting, with which vase-painting parts company again from the great art and returns to decorative silhouette effect. In Attica, too, the circular rendering of the eye is taken over for the male figure, the flesh-tone of the face is retained for decorative effect, women are distinguished by the old outline-drawing, decorative female creatures and monsters do not escape from the silhouette treatment (Fig. [48]).

On vases of this technique the Orientalizing luxuriance developed out of Geometric richness is entered by a new spirit of severity and discipline, which one would be most inclined to explain by strong influence of Protocorinthian art. The field ornaments are similarly limited, and the rosette with points has the chief place; the lotus and palmette pattern of the Nessos vase (Fig. [48]), the cable and the double rays of the Piraeus amphora (Fig. [49]) are simple borrowings, the lion-type on the vase just named is closely connected with the Protocorinthian. One may ask whether the types in spite of their Attic stamp do not partly come from the Sicyonian-Corinthian school. The procession of chariots in the Piraeus amphora is only in the line of old tradition, but on the neck of the Nessos vase the Phaleron type is replaced by another, which is certainly only an extract from a larger composition, and the same artist makes the sisters of Medusa furiously pursue a Perseus not represented at all, whom the Aegina bowl of kindred style and the rather later cauldron in the Louvre show along with his protectors Athena and Hermes. At any rate the vase-painters had no hesitation in taking over the compositions once created and cutting them up, enlarging or abbreviating them according to their requirements, intensifying or weakening them according to their talents. The same lucky ‘laziness of invention’ is shown in the rendering of the individual figure. Old types of Oriental art are behind the battle motive of Herakles, the flight of the Gorgons, and the race of the Harpies on the Aegina bowl; the unusual front view points to the origin of the Gorgon type as an ornament. But the Greek showed originality in animating and enhancing these types. In spite of the harsh perspective it is arrestingly expressive when the Medusa collapses in death, the sisters rush with the speed of lightning through the air, Herakles kicks the back of the rough monster, and the victim supplicates his tormentor by touching his beard: we have an art with the joy of youth full of vigour and possibilities of development displaying itself, the same early Attic art, which next found plastic expression in the early sculptures of the Acropolis. On the Nessos amphora the decorative figures are of secondary importance. The mouth bears the old goose frieze, the broad handles are adorned with owls and swans: under the principal field a row of dolphins gambol, but they are hardly to be conceived of as a meaningless animal frieze, but are to be understood in a ‘landscape’ sense; the wild chase is by sea. On the other vases of this group the animal frieze element is much stronger, on some it entirely prevails, e.g., on big-bellied amphorae with no angle dividing body from neck, and a bason from Vurvá, which both reduce the filling ornaments very considerably. These vases lead over to a noticeably miscellaneous class, the so-called Vurvá style, which just like the older Corinthian denotes a strengthening of the decorative and is also to be regarded as a rival of Corinth. The ornamentation is very limited, for filling there is nothing but rosettes, which may also form independent friezes: the decoration assumes quite similar forms to those of the Corinthian fabric. But the Corinthian elements do not entirely give its character to the Vurvá style. Apart

PLATE XXIV.

[Fig. 49]. ATTIC AMPHORA.

[Fig. 50]. CYCLADIC (EUBOIC) AMPHORA.