Chapter IV: The Black-Figured Style (1)

Archaic art, the wonderful offspring of the contact of Greek civilization with the East, exercises its charm to-day more than ever. We have ceased to ascribe a unique saving grace to the classic period, the period of full bloom, and to allow no independent value to the preceding century except as an inevitable transitional phase. We love these archaic works of sculpture and painting for their own sake, not in spite of their crudities but just because of their unpolished hidden vigour, because of the precious combination of their essential features. The fetters of space, and the strong tradition of an ornamental early period give them a monumental effect, which has nothing of mummified stiffness but is kept ever fresh and youthful by an eminently progressive spirit and an energetic endeavour to attain freedom. The archaic style ‘with fresh boldness goes beyond its Oriental patterns, is ever making fresh experiments, and thus exhibits constant change and progress. It is always full of serious painstaking zeal, it is always careful, takes honest trouble, is exactly methodical: the language which it speaks always tells of inward cheerfulness and joy at the result of effort, the effect produced by independent exertion. There is something touching in the sight of archaic art with its child-like freshness, its painstaking zeal, its reverence for tradition, and yet its bold progressiveness. What a contrast to Oriental and Egyptian art, which are fast bound in tradition: in the one the sweltering air of dull coercion, in the other the fresh atmosphere of freedom’ (Furtwängler).

The history leading up to the origin of this style has become clear to us by quarrying in different localities. We saw the vases lose their peculiarly carpet-like appearance, the filling motives disappear, the bands of animals and ornaments forfeit their independence and become a subordinate member in the tectonic construction, we saw the world of figures win its way out of ornamental compulsion to greater freedom and extend over the vase. The 6th century, to the beginnings of which we pursued the history of vases, knows only occasionally inserted rosettes, or a lonely bud projecting into the field. Plant ornamentation becomes true Greek ornament, abstract, tectonic, and when occasion demands, full of life with its swing. Animal friezes retire to the foot or the shoulder, are often incidentally treated as mere decorative accessories or seized by quite unheraldic liveliness. The principal interest is devoted to depicting man, his doings and goings on. The vase painter is now more anxious than ever to narrate and depict; he finds ever less satisfaction in ornamental composition. He is never tired of describing hunting and warfare, wrestling and chariot-racing, the festal dance and procession, but with greatest preference, remembering the purpose of his vases, drinking and wild dancing. But also the heroes of past ages, their bold exploits and strange adventures, are his constant theme. The Homeric Epic, the tales of Herakles the mighty, the bold Perseus and Bellerophon, had evoked pictorial representations even in the 7th century; but now the full stream of the legendary treasury pours into painting and gives an infinitely rich material to the joy of narration.

What the vase-painter makes of this material is never conceived in the historical or archæological spirit, but breathes entirely the air of his own time; often only the added names (which according to the new feeling for space assume smaller dimensions) raise a genre scene into one from myth. Moreover the Saga is only seldom re-shaped by inventive brains. Types once invented pass on, go from workshop to workshop, from one district to another, are abbreviated (p. 49), expanded, conventionally repeated or filled with new life. Types may also cross; there arise purely through art, contaminations of legend, which are foreign to poetry. When a Corinthian painter unites the Embassy to Achilles (Iliad IX) with the visit of Thetis, this has as little to do with poetry, as when on Attic vases the birth of Athena is coupled with the apotheosis of Herakles, or the slaying of Troilos is transferred to Astyanax, or the entombment of the dead Sarpedon to Memnon. But everything strange need not be misunderstanding on the artist’s part. The vases supply us with a multitude of legendary motives and variations, which we cannot find in literature, and are the faithful reflex of the fluidity of Greek mythology, which, devoid of canon and dogmatism, was in constant flux.

Olympos too, is subject to these vicissitudes. Its gods live a human life among men, the only difference being that some representative scenes give them a stiffer and more elaborate appearance than that of ordinary mortals. In early times the divinity is chiefly betokened by inscriptions and attributes. On the painting of the Corinthian Kleanthes stood Poseidon with a fish in his hand beside Zeus in labour. Late observers of this picture failed to understand this external characterization of the sea-god, and saw an act of brotherly sympathy with the god’s pains in this holding up of the tunny; and thus a great deal beside must have appeared strange to them, _e.g._ Apollo with the great lyre still bearded in the 7th century (Fig. 52), Herakles without lion-skin (Fig. 64), the unarmed Athena, who only at the beginning of the 6th century, in contrast with the Chigi vase (Fig. 37), the Aegina bowl and the Gorgon lebes (p. 49), begins to express her bellicose nature by attributes, and much besides.

The favourite god of the drinking vessels is the wine-god with cup and vine. He makes Hephaistos drunk and leads him back to Olympos to liberate Hera from the magic chair. The big-bellied dancers and purely human creatures, who form his escort on Corinthian vases, in the first third of the century are superseded by the Ionic horse-men, the Satyrs, who become ever more closely associated with Dionysos, celebrate feasts with the Maenads, never despise the gifts of their master, and make fair nymphs pay for it. The half-bestial creature in whom ancient Greek fancy vigorously incorporates man’s pleasure in wine and women with all its comic effects, is quite the patron of archaic vase-painting.

That all these representations were developed by vase-painting alone is more than improbable. That the Bacchic scenes of toping and dancing were created on the actual vase, is most likely; but one is often enough compelled to assume other sources. The fight of Herakles with the lion, for instance, in its oldest form is the borrowing of an Oriental type, which is composed for a tall rectangle, and is expanded by the vase-painters for their purposes by filling figures, ‘spectators.’ The gifted artist, who gave this heraldic type the more natural impress which was regular in the older black-figured style, was perhaps a vase-painter; the creator of the later black-figured type was certainly not, for his horizontal group is certainly a fine invention but always has to be adapted artificially to the vase surface. As with the wrestling of Herakles, so it is with Theseus’ struggle with the Minotaur. The same sort of extension occurs on a favourite subject of older black-figured style, the quadriga in front view, whose horses heraldically turn their heads sideways, whose helmeted warrior is in front view while the unhelmeted driver is in profile. This type, certainly invented for a square, is also known in bronze and stone relief, and the question, in what technique it first appeared, will scarcely be answered in favour of vase-painting. For a square, too, the finely compact group of Herakles wrestling with Triton was first composed, a theme common on Attic vases from the hydria of Timagoras onwards; the older wrestling scheme, superseded by this type, in its Herakles spread out before the eyes of the observer and kneeling as he wrestles, still shows strong affinity with the Orientalizing frieze compositions (p. 46), and is for vase decoration much more typical than the later invention, which on vases always has a ‘borrowed’ effect. The dependence of vase-painting on other techniques is finally evidenced by the so-called ‘couplings’: the best-known instance is the combination of the departure of Amphiaraos with the Funeral-games of Pelias on a Corinthian (Fig. 66), an Attic and an Ionic vase, a combination which is borrowed from an inlaid wooden chest of Corinthian workmanship at Olympia (‘the chest of Kypselos’) or a prototype from which both were derived.

After all this one will not hesitate to look for a strong reflex of the great art of painting on the vases, alongside of the special property of the vase-painter and typical ornamental figures equally common to all art, or to picture to oneself wall-paintings or easel pictures, like the birth of Athena by Kleanthes, after the fashion of the best vase-paintings, which are least constrained by ornamental considerations, or to reconstruct from the copies of vase-painters compositions like the Destruction of Troy (Iliupersis), the Return of Hephaistos, the Reception of Herakles into Olympos. One is particularly impelled this way, when the vases give now shorter, now longer, extracts from the same large composition; thus we have a reflection on some dozen vases of Exekias and his successors of the fine representation of the heroes Aias and Achilles surprised by the Trojans while deeply absorbed in a game of draughts, and warned by Athena just in time (Fig. 96). One cannot conceive of any difference of principle in perspective, in the rendering of the body and the drapery, in the spiritual content, between vase-painting and free painting; they both are children of one time. Nor did the vase-painter feel any necessity to alter the composition of his patterns. Only as he had to decorate framed bands, the law of isocephalism was more binding for him than for the great art. Hence his strong disinclination for “landscape,” which we often meet with in Corinthian and Ionian pinakes and wall-painting, but on the vases never, or only in palpable caricature; the painter who on a hydria from Caere copied a seascape with the Rape of Europa, was obliged to place beside the figure what looks like a mole-hill but is intended for a mountain.

This limitation of the possibilities of composition by decorative considerations was of hardly any importance. The wide gulf between free painting and vase picture was conditioned in the first instance by technique. It was that which gave its special effect to the black-figured style and set its stamp upon it. We saw previously that vase-painting, when it took over the silhouette style from the decorative animal frieze, increased its distance from free painting, under whose spell it had been for a good part of the 7th century, that with the incised technique it took over, _e.g._ the circular drawing of the eye, and with the new colouring entered decorative paths (pp. 38, 44, 49). Free painting drew with the brush on light ground, used black and white very sparingly, more frequently red, blue, green, yellow and brown; placed these colours side by side in simple harmonies, with very little gradation and shading, but also sometimes, _e.g._ to represent fire, used the smooth brush; rendered the men in reddish brown, women, children, animals and objects in light colouring. With this free-coloured effect the black-figured style was neither able nor anxious to compete. Just like the Geometric, it is in its own fashion again an ornamental style, which does not disown its predominantly decorative character. The figure silhouettes serve it as ornaments to fill a given space, which are in a certain equipoise of colour in relation to the rest of the decoration and the black painted parts of the vase; the incision stipulates a sharp delineation of types, the imposed colour gives a parti-coloured effect. The coloured effect of the vases is essentially defined by the clay, which now, in the developed black-figured style, takes on a brilliant warm red upper surface, and by the black glaze, which assumes a metallic lustre. The darker colouring of the clay deprives the lighter parts of their effects by contrast, and compels the painters to replace the contour-drawing of women, linen garments, etc., gradually by laying on white colour, with which at first the contour is simply filled; but afterwards more commonly black underpainting is overlaid. With the transition to white, clear silhouettes are also obtained, which set off against the background more effectively than the old contour figures.

The advance in the preparation of the clay and glaze colour came about on the Greek mainland. Tradition makes the Sicyonian Butades invent the red colouring of the clay at Corinth, and thus gives the correct indication. The Chalcidian and Attic workshops helped the new technique to prevail; in the East it gradually gets the upper hand and forces the Ionian manufactories to give up their favourite white ground and adapt their technical freedom to the growing strictness of the western system. Attica, which in the 6th century opens a dangerous rivalry in Eastern and Western markets and finally wins the day, brings the process to perfection. With the refinement of incised technique it puts an end to the parti-coloured method still much affected by Corinthians and Chalkidians, it clears away the big surfaces coloured red and white and all colour in ornament and animal frieze, and helps the harmony of clay and black to its purest and fullest effect.

With the disappearance of the old parti-coloured system the vases are completely removed from the effect of free painting. For that we may be grateful to fortune. For this refinement of the black-figured style permitted the sensitive feeling of Greek artists for decoration to satisfy the delight of narrating and describing along with the ornamental traditions of the old style. They had no need, as had the old Minoan vase-painters (p. 10), to shrink from borrowing figured scenes. The recasting of types into the decorative silhouette style made it possible for them to conjure on to the vases whatever touched their hearts and delighted their eyes, and thus to transmit to us an infinite variety of scenes, without which our knowledge of Greek legend, Greek life and Greek art would have remained terribly scanty.

Corinth must lead off the history of this new style. The chief centre of commerce and industry in the Peloponnese, the celebrated seat of a flourishing ceramic industry and of an important school of painting, it not only took the decisive step to the new technique, but even in its red-clay phase had helped the designs to drive out animal decoration, and composed, or at least introduced into vase-painting, numerous types, which supply material to other workshops for a long time. The quadriga in front view, which Chalcidian and Attic painters repeated so often and which kept

Fig. 64. HERAKLES AND EURYTIOS; HORSEMEN: FROM A CORINTHIAN KRATER.

Fig. 65. CORINTHIAN KRATER.]

its decorative effect for almost a century, appears here for the first time; the triangular scheme of two wrestlers seizing each other by the arms and pressing head against head, which survived to the time of Nikosthenes, was taken by the Amphiaraos krater (Fig. 66) from the above-mentioned chest of Kypselos (p. 67); the nuptial procession of Peleus and Thetis which we shall meet on the lebes of Sophilos and the François-vase is prepared for in Corinthian vase-painting; and the battle-scenes, rider-friezes and chariot-races, of which there was a beginning in the Protocorinthian style, were most richly developed by the Corinthians, and adopted by Chalkis and Athens often without any essential improvement. Thus one may be sure, that a number of other types, which are not represented in the selection that accident has given us, started their victorious career from Corinth, and that the lost great art of Corinth, the bronze industry of which we have specimens and the richly-adorned chest of Kypselos described by Pausanias supplied to the vase-painters a number of mythological compositions, which influenced other manufactories. Unfortunately the greater part of this rich treasure is lost to us. The loss is the more to be lamented, as what we have shows us a fine inventive talent on the part of the Corinthian artists and a magnificently free and easy conception of life and legend. The Homeric poetry and the Epic inspired by it, the lays of Peleus and Herakles, the ballad poetry now becoming very fashionable, from which come _e.g._ the birth of Athena and probably also the Return of Hephaistos to Olympos, are reflected on these Corinthian vases in inimitably vivid and drastic fashion; and the vase-painter also gives scenes from daily life, carouses, drunken men who dance wildly with naked women, kitchen and winepress, riding and driving, marching out to battle, and the wild mellay itself. It is particularly on the kraters (Figs. 64-66) that we can trace how the accumulating material gets space on the vases; animal decoration, in which heraldic cocks are very popular, retires ever more to the reverse, under the handles, into the base stripe, and also by preference is replaced by lines of galloping riders, who form a lively decorative foil to the mythological principal picture (Fig. 64). Meanwhile filling ornament disappears. The flying bird over the rider (Fig. 65) renders the same service as the rosette, nay a better; it transplants the scene out of a decorative space into an actual one, the open country; and the space-filling animals of the Amphiaraos vase, which are traditional (p. 40), are not intended merely any longer to enliven the vase surface but the wall of the house, the floor and the air. Thus the liberation of the field, for which Timonidas and his fellows paved the way, is attained. With this goes hand in hand the liberation of figure-drawing from ornamental constraint. The outspreading of the figure in the surface, which is still strong in the 7th century, is toned down or ingeniously given a motive, as with the kneeling warrior who fights backwards, and does not disguise his connection with the old runner with bent knee. The individualizing of men and animals carried forward by Timonidas now once more makes big advances in human figures, horses and dogs.

We will select two of the kraters to give us an idea of the development of the style. One, a Paris vase (Fig. 64), gives a special application to a fine banqueting scene, by added names and the insertion of Iole, as the visit paid by Herakles to Eurytios, king of Oichalia. The fair daughter of the house stands with some indifference between the guest and her brother; it is supposed to represent a legend, but is really little more than a genre scene, as which it is hard to beat. The lively conversation of the guests, the dogs tied to the sofa-legs waiting and speculating on the chance of

Fig. 66. DEPARTURE OF AMPHIARAOS: FROM A CORINTHIAN KRATER.]

bits falling from the table are masterly, and even the horses in the supporting frieze, if out of proportion and inelegant, are the more characteristic and living. The technique follows old tradition; the flesh of Iole, tables and sofas, one dog, shields on the reverse, appear in outline drawing. Such contours, also found sometimes where men’s bodies left white set off those painted dark, unite to some extent, as does the red colouring of the male countenance, the vase in its effect with the great art.

On the other hand the Amphiaraos krater (Fig. 66), which gives up red for male faces, and makes a point of covering the outline figures with a layer of white, has become more decorative and black-figured. Its pictures are not equal in execution to the invention, but come from excellent models (p. 67). Between the colonnade and façade of the house, which are in line like the tables in the Eurytios vase, the hero, because of his oath, mounts his chariot to go with open eyes to the death he forebodes; his angry look is directed to Eriphyle and the fatal necklace in her hand. With raised hands the family takes leave, a maid-servant gives the stirrup-cup to the charioteer. Foreboding evil, the faithful Halimedes sits on the ground: his heart has evidently bidden him to train up the boy Alkmaion to take vengeance on his mother. The whole delight in narration, which in the exaggerated rendering of the necklace strongly emphasizes the previous history, is as genuinely archaic, as the mythological individualizing of an old type ‘The warrior’s departure.’

The Amphiaraos krater is more developed than the Eurytios vase, not merely in technique. The painter of the later vase, though not so gifted as his colleague, draws more cleverly, and works with a set of types before him, as the frieze of riders shows. The advance becomes plain in the shape of the vase. The Eurytios krater encloses an almost uniformly swelling cauldron between a lip ring which is very low and a foot which spreads out in ample dimensions. From this round-bellied archaic shape we pass to a later more defined and elegant one in the Amphiaraos krater, which has a higher neck, a steeper and much less swelling body, with its lower part running to a point, till finally the outline almost resembles an inverted triangle and from the handles a rectangular or curved bridge has to be built leading to the high rim (krater à colonnette). The tendency to development, which we can read out of the vase shapes, may be taken as a symbol of the history of style. For a Greek vase was always something organic, as much so as a tree or animal.

Unfortunately, besides the large kraters with their numerous figures, which were favourite articles of export, few vases are preserved. In the scene on the Eurytios krater we get the lebes with stand, also the jug and drinking cup (kylix), which exist in various extant specimens. The kylix has an offset lip (as in Fig. 24), and often knobs on the handles, the interior picture is framed by tongue pattern. Beside the necked amphorae, which like the kraters seldom have any other ornament than rays, shoulder tongues and neck rosettes, the similarly decorated big-bellied amphorae continue, which like their Attic parallels (p. 51) put human busts or animal representations of old and new style into the figure panel. The three-handled water pitcher (hydria) has the type with vaulted shoulder common in the older black-figured style, and adorns it with spirals and maeanders. All these ornaments, to which may be added the double lotus and palmette of the Eurytios krater and occasional net and step patterns, partake of the solidity and variety of the style.

Strangely enough, the phase of the Corinthian style here described is for us the end of the fabric; not one of these

Fig. 67. CORINTHIAN PLATE.

Fig. 68. THE SLAYING OF TYPHON BY ZEUS: CHALKIDIAN HYDRIA.]

Fig. 69. CHALKIDIAN AMPHORA.]

vases can be dated below the first third of the 6th century. Corinthian pottery has no share in the Eastern Herakles with the lion-skin, the Amazons as Scythian women, the entry of the Satyrs, the rendering of folds, the painted ground for white additions. One asks whether this brilliant development could break off so abruptly, or if it is only accident which has concealed from us its continuation. Both are improbable. It looks rather as if, just as the Protocorinthian manufactory had its continuation in the Corinthian, so the Corinthian was carried on by the Chalkidian. For the vases denoted by their inscriptions as Chalkidian form, at all events according to the present state of our knowledge, a group covering a few decades, which is in succession of time to the later Corinthian vases, and is most closely connected with them by a series of detailed agreements. Not only do the vase shapes consistently carry on Corinthian tendencies, but details of decoration like the white neck rosettes filled with red, and the step pattern (Figs. 68 and 69) continue; the Corinthian animal friezes with rosettes, the heraldic cocks, with the serpents, the winged demon, the riders with the space-filling birds (Fig. 69), the wrestlers scheme, the grotesque dancers, the quadriga in front view are taken over; nay, details of drawing, like the warrior’s head in front view, the round outline of the edge of the short small chiton (Figs. 70 and 71), the red spots on black clothes (Fig. 70), the sword sheath with the St. Andrew crosses (Fig. 71), the devices on the shields are not conceivable without their Corinthian predecessors; even the names of Corinthian grotesque dancers pass over to the Chalkidian Satyrs.

Not a single Chalkidian vase has been found in Chalkis itself, nor even in any part of the mother-country: all specimens preserved come from the West. One might therefore assume that the fabric had its seat, not in Chalkis itself, but in one of its colonies, and thus the powerful Corinthian traditions in this pottery would be easily explained. The West was dominated, as we saw, throughout the 7th century by Corinthian exportation; and the colonies of Chalkis had always been provided by friendly Corinth with clay vases. But the strong influence of the Chalkidian manufactory on the Attic is in favour of Chalkis itself having put an end to Corinthian production, or at any rate to Corinthian exportation. Why and how, cannot be stated: perhaps the publication of the many unpublished specimens will solve the riddle and clear up the close relation of the Chalkidian ware to the group of the Phineus kylix (Fig. 74).

From every point of view the Chalkidian vases give us a heightening of the Corinthian, a great advance in the direction of a later period. Clay and black now attain their highest perfection, the distribution of colour is most delicately calculated; no longer is there so much use made of white surfaces (under which there is regularly a wash of black); especially we see no more of the arbitrary colour-contrast which did not shrink from white colouring of the male. If the Corinthian style had already aimed at metallic effect in the angular formation of the handles and the curving of the handle-bridges of the krater, the Chalkidian heightens these tendencies almost to faithful copying of metal vases, and consistently develops the vase shapes to the highest, almost over-refined elegance; the narrowing of the lower part of the body leads to the insertion of a roll, which the painter picks out in red from the black foot. Thus arise novel vase-shapes; the necked amphora (Fig. 69) is elongated, its shoulder flattened, so that the body almost assumes the shape of an egg; the krater gets steep sides, high neck, and outward-bent handle bridges; out of the older hydria with arched shoulder comes a later shape, which, in a specimen at Munich (Fig. 68) exactly copies the addition of cast handles to a metal body; and similarly the other shapes develop, the kylix with knobs on the handles, the two-handled cup, the jug.

The same endeavour after elasticity and elegance prevails in the distribution of the ornament over the vase, which was managed in a more masterly way at Chalkis than elsewhere. Certainly the ornamentation is based almost entirely on Corinthian foundations. The white dot-rosettes filled with red on the black neck, the lotus and palmette on the ground of the clay, tongues on the shoulder, and rays at the foot, the step pattern under the chief frieze are of old tradition but pass through a growing elaboration. As a new motive of decoration comes in the chain of buds, which we know from the East: as a rule it occurs beneath the chief band (Fig. 69), or hangs over the figure-field in place of the lotus and palmette. The Ionic pattern is not exactly imitated in the process; the swellings under the Chalkidian buds suggest roses rather than lotus. Out of these buds, palmettes, and the tendrils uniting them, is formed the fixed ornament, which generally serves as central motive to heraldic animals and often develops into a wonderfully rich complex of lively lines (Fig. 69). The proper place for this ornament is the centre of the upper band, which recovers its importance, now that the shoulder is set off more sharply in hydriae and necked amphorae, and as secondary field for decoration is, like the reverse of vases, usually decorated in the first instance with animals. On the shoulder-stripe the riders with the space-filling birds tend to drive out the archaic scheme of decoration; they flank the lotus and palmette cross and in later specimens, where the horizontal shoulder is no longer dominant in the general view, they pass from heraldic constraint to parade order, and are also occasionally replaced by cleverly disposed dancers. The reverse of the vase also more and more shakes off animal decoration and replaces it by ornamental compositions, as by the heraldic quadriga or the heraldic riders. Friezes of animals beneath the main scene (Fig. 68) become very rare. However markedly the decoration of the vase departs from the old style, yet in spite of that there is in contrast with the Corinthian style a marked decorative invasion to be traced. The vases that have nothing but animal decoration are numerous, and the rosette often asserts itself again.

This decorative invasion, which is connected with the perfection of technique and marked talent of the Chalkidian artizan, does not detract in any way from the figure scenes. The latter preserve their old vigour and power of observation, some masters even raise it to a most intense elasticity, and breathe into the old types a new and vivid life, which in union with the line technique and arrangement in space makes these vases superior to most of the other black-figured pottery. How Herakles on the London amphora (Fig. 70) unmercifully deals the death-blow to the three-bodied Geryon, or on the similar Munich vase (Fig. 71) to Kyknos, is brought before our eyes with unambiguous matter-of-fact and verve.

The chest of Kypselos had already thus represented Herakles’ fight with Geryon, and the Chalkidian painter rests here, as often and especially in his battle scenes, on Corinthian types. But his rendering is anything but a borrowing, and bears witness to fresh and vigorous conception. The ‘Herakles and Kyknos’ is based on the old fighting scheme, which represents a warrior with raised right arm assailing an opponent who almost kneeling moves to the right but looks round; and so in effect only combines the ‘duellist’ (p. 39) and the runner with bent knee. On the Chalkidian picture the old ‘exigency of space’ type is hardly any longer to be traced; everything has become

Fig. 70.

HERAKLES AND GERYONEUS: FROM A CHALKIDIAN AMPHORA.]

expressive and characteristic. To be sure the contrast between the body in front view and the legs in profile and the spreading over the surface are still hardly toned down, but the thrust dealt with the right arm, the clutch of the left, the foot pressed against the back of the opponent’s knee are full of vigour, and the collapse of the bleeding son of Ares, his prayer for mercy while he plucks the victor’s beard, the dimmed eye with its pathos, the composition and the filling of the space are very artistic.

This heightening of characteristic touches does not merely appear in battle scenes, but also the intimate touches in many Corinthian subjects are carried on. Even the Eurytios krater had succeeded in expressing the horror which seizes Odysseus and Diomede at the sight of the suicide of Aias. The feeling in this group is perhaps surpassed by an episode in a Chalkidian battle-scene; where the intent care, with which Sthenelos binds up the finger of the wounded Diomede, reminds one of the later kylix of Sosias (Fig. 114); and when a Paris amphora enlarges the march out to battle by a domestic scene of arming, early red-figured painting is again anticipated.

The combination of this fresh and direct observation of nature with a marked decorative talent unites Chalkidian with the Ionic art of the islands. On Chalkidian soil, where a language with a strong Ionic element was spoken, a close contact with eastern neighbours must be assumed. It is not only the chain of buds on the vases that witnesses to this contact. The Satyr, a hairy fat fellow, with marked horse-ears and horse-tail, often with horse-hoofs, enters from the East in a form, which meets us on the Phineus vase (Fig. 74). And when the Chalkidian painter occasionally indicates the outline of the female back, where previously the drapery falling straight down entirely concealed it, when he furnishes his Geryon with wings and often equips Herakles with the lion’s skin, in this, as in much besides, one cannot fail to see Eastern influence. Whether the rendering of folds, the beginnings of which appear on Chalkidian vases as elsewhere, has the same origin, is doubtful.

The fabric in the Ionic islands which was in close reciprocal relation with the Chalkidian, may be called the ‘Phineus’ fabric after its chief product, till accident betrays to us its home. From the remains of lettering on the Phineus kylix, it can only be said, that it was produced in a place where Ionic was spoken, which cannot have been near to Asia Minor. The style, more Eastern than Chalkidian, but different from East Ionic in much, _e.g._ the circular drawing of the male eye, and closely akin to Chalkidian, is probably of Cycladic origin. But a connection of this pottery with one of the old Cycladic manufactories (p. 52) is impossible. As little as the Chalkidian has it any previous history; the few amphorae and kylikes that remain belong exactly to the same short period of time, in which the Chalkidian vases were produced.

The amphorae are rather earlier than the Phineus vase, and often very like the decorative earlier Chalkidian specimens. Chalkis seems to have supplied to them the western technique, the vase-shape, the foot-ring, and also to have supplied the patterns in many specimens for animal and rider decoration. But the less severe construction of the vases, the irregular division of the fields for figures, the preference for a dark covering of the ground above the rays, the liberties in decoration, lead us to more Eastern soil. The very chain of buds, luxuriant and hardly stylized, which often covers the neck, shows the unpedantic and concrete Ionic style, and the same playful carelessness appears, when the painter is lavish with filling rosettes and buds, when he inserts into a heraldic frieze of animals a complex of creatures furiously biting each other, or puts

Fig. 72. IONIC EYE KYLIX.

Fig. 73.

HEAD OF ATHENA, BETWEEN THE EYES OF AN IONIC KYLIX.]

between his favourite squatting sphinxes a fighting warrior, a couple of dancers, or two running girls, when he composes heraldically the heads of two processions of riders, and makes a combatant the central motive of heraldic riders, when he invents animal combinations with a common head. So it is no wonder if he makes into an effective motive of decoration the apotropaic eyes popular in this phase of art, which we know from Delian, Melian, and Rhodian vases of the 7th century (Fig. 57), if he often adds ears and nose, and fills the centre with an arbitrarily chosen motive, a leaf or a human figure. The eyes are found on the necks of amphorae, but very often as outside decoration of the kylix, which in perfected specimens shows alike the height and the end of this manufacture.

The wonderfully living and swelling outline of these delicate kylikes (Fig. 72) may be taken as a symbol of the style of the figures, which is absolutely remote from abstract dryness. It often enough adopts Corinthian-Chalkidian types as models. The ‘Phineus’ painter did not invent of himself the warrior with head in front view; the slaying of Troilos goes back to an old Corinthian type; the pursuit of the mounted Penthesileia introduces, it is true, a new Eastern Amazon type in place of the old one (which is also used in this group), but is based on the composition of a Corinthian battle picture. What the ‘Phineus’ painter does with his models is always distinguished by individual and genuinely Ionic life. On the group of amphorae a fine vigorous figure style prevails, which on the kylikes has a finer and at the same time more delicate development. The charming Athena (Fig. 73), who now appears in armour, and whose shield-edge the painter for decorative reasons has doubled, the Scythian who like the mounted Amazon is at home in East Greece, the skipping Silenus, the dog in front view would not tell us much of this kylix-style. But fortunately the painter of the Phineus kylix surrounded the fine Silenus mask in the interior with a continuous frieze, the lack of which a hundred contemporary vases could not outweigh. The wall with the vine and the lion’s head plainly divides the frieze into two scenes: evidently a magic well, which pours wine into the cup of the delighted Satyr. A lion, a panther and two stags draw the chariot of the Wine-god and his consort. On the legendary team a Satyr is making mischief; two of his colleagues are quite diverted from their duty by the sight of three nymphs, who are bathing at a spring in a wood. A lion’s head as spout pours into a basin the water with which they are laving themselves; their clothes they have already hung up. The other picture shows the blind king Phineus, from whom the Harpies have taken the food off the table, for which he is vainly feeling; the valiant sons of Boreas pursue the impudent thieves through the air over the sea.

All is living, original and drastic in its conception, as perhaps was only possible for an Ionian. The movements of the Satyrs and the nude maidens, the animals and plant-life are caught from nature, and this study betrays itself in various details. The face of Phineus, still painted red like that of the Satyrs, is drawn in front view, which we have hitherto only found in the helmeted warrior’s head, the collar-bone and chest muscles are rendered, the eyes of the Boreads are already much reduced in scale. Especially important is the treatment of the drapery, not to mention the linen chiton of Dionysos with its parallel lines indicating the material, or the long red chitons of the women and the curved outline of the shirts of the Boreads, or the garments of the Harpies adorned with Ionic crosses and borders; important innovations appear in the himatia, that of Phineus is divided into

Fig. 74.

PHINEUS; DIONYSOS: FRIEZE ROUND THE INTERIOR OF AN IONIC EYE KYLIX.

_From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._]

red and black stripes, those of Dionysos and the women show rendering of folds. That the himation rather emphasizes than conceals the outline of the back, is a true Ionic feature.

Beyond this stage, the ‘Phineus’ fabric cannot be traced. Generally the Cycladic pottery of this period is hard to get hold of. We do not know whether there were more factories on the islands, and some isolated but allied specimens with more fully Ionic alphabet cannot yet be localized. On the other hand, the ceramic history of the Greek East offers at least some fixed points, though the transition from the old style has not yet been cleared up. We were able to accompany the Rhodian-Naukratite and the ‘Fikellura’ styles to the very threshold of the black-figured, but here the thread seems to snap. Shallow bowls found in Egypt and South Russia with bud decoration and black-figured interior designs, which were imitated by the Attic Vurvá style, and amphorae with remains of the old ornamentation and big isolated animal-silhouettes in the field, perhaps represent the latest products of the Rhodian style. The ‘Fikellura’ style finds its continuation in a ware, which was certainly produced in Klazomenai, perhaps also in several places at the same time, and has come to light not only in the Ionian region and the colonies in Egypt and the Black Sea, but also in Italy. The Klazomenian style has in common with its predecessor not only a series of ornaments (tongues, rays, late Rhodian garlands, continuous tendrils, rows of crescents, friezes of leaves, ‘metope’ maeanders, buds in the field, scales over a surface), but continues the old shape of amphora and has the same preference for loose decoration: beside the vases adorned in bands, on which the animal friezes are driven out of the chief band, it is very fond of a field consisting of a reserved panel or running all round, and of the decoration of the neck by means of an ornament, an animal head or a human head. In the field it likes to put instead of the heraldic pair a single animal, a sphinx before a standing man or upright branch, an isolated palmette and lotus cross, which are in a measure constituent parts of heraldic compositions, and shows the same freedom, going even beyond that of the Phineus painter, when it makes isolated figures, dancers, running girls, or men wearing mantles, the central motive of its heraldic sphinxes or cocks, and when it puts a runner with bent knee between two lions that turn away from him (Fig. 75). The palmette and lotus-cross and the animal types differ from Western types; the selection, too, is characteristic of the East. There is a special preference for the Siren: this bird-woman is used surprisingly often heraldically, and in rows to make a frieze. The female panther occurs as well as the male; the grazing deer is a Rhodian legacy. The ostriches show knowledge of Africa, the winged horses and boars connection with Asiatic art. The Klazomenian style is particularly strong in the new formation of fantastic beings, to which the near neighbourhood of the East gave the impulse. The seahorse and the Triton were invented somewhere in this area: to the ‘Fikellura’ man with the head of a hare Klazomenai adds a being with a tail and a lion’s head among human revellers, among dancing men and women appears suddenly the bearded monster with the horse’s tail, the Satyr (Fig. 75).

The stock of types varies considerably from that of the West; this is particularly clear in the scenes with human figures. Beside the pictures of riders and battles, beside the few preserved legendary scenes, among which the most important are the battles of Amazons, who here in the East have become mounted Scythian women, the prominent place is taken by scenes of drinking and dancing in the

Fig. 75. SATYR AND MAENAD: KLAZOMENIAN VASE FROM KYME.

Fig. 76. NECK-DESIGN OF AN IONIC AMPHORA.]

manner of the Altenburg amphora (Fig. 63). The file principle, so potent in the East Ionic animal frieze, strongly asserts itself in the dancing maidens and the abandoned revellers: the oblique inclination forward, which the Klazomenian painter often gives the intoxicated, and which is very successfully preserved on an early Milesian relief in London, emphasizes at the same time the decorative arrangement, and increases the expressiveness, just as the eccentric movements of the dancers equally well fill the space and mark the tone. For life, sensual and everyday though often grotesque and brutal, is what these Ionian masters give, even if they are only decorative artists or artizans, whatever it may cost. So they succeed in nothing so well as women, satyrs and animals. The maidens with their receding foreheads, almond-shaped and often obliquely set eyes, and the little mouth somewhat drawn in below, and the well-marked back contour, have an attractiveness even on the most careless representations; the shaggy satyrs betray their equine nature not merely in ear, tail and hoof; the robust strong-maned horses, the female panthers with swelling breasts, the fighting cocks forgetting their heraldic duties, all show nature very close at hand.

The history of this style, which must approximately extend over the first half of the 6th century, can be to some extent followed. In the beginning comes the conflict of the old Ionic and Western techniques, the transition from the light slip to the reddish-yellow surface, and the tendencies in ornamentation which still strongly remind one of ‘Fikellura.’ The silhouette style makes liberal use of white. Not only with inherited aversion does it often replace incision by delicate lines of paint, provide garments with white crosses, animals with white spots and white belly-stripe, and ornaments with white details: in its earlier period it also extends the white surfaces, which it still places on the ground of the clay at times, from women and linen chitons to men, horses and dogs, and becomes as parallel to the Corinthian style with this contrast of colouring as with its wide-necked broad-bellied form of amphora.

The latest wares of the colony of Daphne (abandoned in 560 B.C.) show the transition to the rendering of folds of drapery, which takes the place of the old parti-coloured surfaces in the group of vases which took its rise about the middle of the century. In this later group, to which a series of ‘lebetes’ with topers, satyrs, centaurs, and battle scenes is an obvious introductory link, and which culminates in two amphorae at Munich (Figs. 76 and 78) and one in Castle Ashby, there enters into the old style varied, free and easy, broadly even laxly rendered, a peculiar severity and discipline. The three chief specimens, necked amphorae with the continuous scene preferred by the East, are more defined and elastic in shape, more finished in shape and colour, more ornamental and elaborate in the rendering of the figures, than was the case with the earlier style. The conclusion which naturally suggests itself, that this new spirit came from the West and the Chalkidian-Attic region, is confirmed by the ornaments. Beside the Ionic looped and plaited bands, leaf and bud friezes, and the continuous tendrils (Fig. 76), come the double rays, the Western palmette and lotus system; and when the painter scatters animals among the ornaments (Fig. 76), he follows old Ionic tradition, but the hare and the hedgehog with the ostrich riders of the Castle Ashby amphora are of Corinthian origin (Fig. 66). In the treatment of the figure, the meeting of Eastern vigour and Western severity makes as charming an effect as the genuinely Ionic and very decorative composition; the scene of a Munich amphora arranged round a centre (Fig. 77) with the cunning Hermes, who creeping up on

Fig. 77. HERMES STEALS THE COW IO FROM THE GIANT ARGOS. FROM AN IONIC AMPHORA.]

Fig. 78. CENTAURS HUNTING: FROM THE SAME AMPHORA AS FIG. 77.]

tip-toe steals away the fair cow Io from the sleeping giant Argos, and the picture of the Centaurs hunting on the reverse (Fig. 78) are full of ornamental vigour and at the same time full of fresh observation. The left hand of the giant shows a new study of nature compared with the old-fashioned right of Hermes and left of the front Centaur; in the giant the artist is struggling to represent the anatomy, and the mantle of Hermes plainly falls in layers, in contrast with the absence of folds in the chiton.

The new impetus, which even expressed itself in exportation to Italy, could not save the Klazomenian manufactory from the preponderance of its Attic rival; it is at the same time its end. Not that the East Ionic decorative tendencies formed a blind alley; the combination with western technique ensured its continued life. But Asia Minor, which at this time fell into the hands of the Persians, was not a suitable soil for continued production. Athens seized not only the exportation but the entire production. The arrival at Athens of East Ionic artists is reflected not merely in the names of the vase-painters. When on the jug of Kolchos and the Attic vases, typical Eastern principles of composition crop up, when Nikosthenes introduces an East Ionic shape of amphora (Fig. 104), when the red-figured technique coming into existence on Klazomenian sarcophagi conquers the Attic workshops, when on early red-figure kylikes the same decorative tendencies which prevailed in the East assert themselves, there can be no question of an extinction of East Ionic art, but only of a re-birth in Athens, and a baptism with Attic spirit.

About on a level with the Castle Ashby group is another East Ionic class, also only known through export to Italy, the ‘Caeretan hydriae,’ so-called from the place where they were mostly found (amphorae and kraters being also represented), which are usually attributed to South East Ionia. The developed vase-shapes, the completed black figure technique, which has a wash under the white and uses incision freely even for outlines, and the decoration, which has got beyond the animal style, make their late origin certain, and the agreement with Ephesian sculpture of about 550 B.C., expressed in treatment of hair, converging mantle folds and the graded edges of the drapery, clinches the matter. When in spite of that these vases stick fast to the system of contrast in colour, that agrees with an expressed preference for gay decoration such as from the days of the Naukratis vases South East Ionia loved. The ‘Caeretan’ painter actually enhances this colour preference, in that he varies the colour of the male body from black to dark red, bright yellow and white and similarly alternates the colour of hair and clothes. He gives the same motley effect to the ornamentation, which shows plainly its descent from the old Rhodian in its broad lotus and palmette system, its rosettes, hook-crosses, and spiral-crosses ornamenting the neck, and also reveals East Ionic freedom in natural myrtle branches and ivy-tendrils, in bucrania with festoons and in interspersed animals. The animal world too, with its fallow deer, lions, griffins, winged horses, and winged bulls, is characteristic of the East and the neighbourhood of Asia. These animals have long ceased to play their heraldic part, though on the reverse of the vase two may face each other in symmetrical correspondence; they are rather by choice included in hunting scenes. The traditional tendency finds a refuge, if anywhere, in the figure scenes. In heraldic scenes of battle, in the horse-taming ‘runner with bent knee,’ in Satyr and Nymph running to meet each other, it asserts itself: but the living interest makes one forget the ornamental scheme. Lively drastic description is the strong point of the ‘Caeretan’ painter. His broadly treated scenes of hunting, fighting, and wrestling, the fine delineations

Fig. 79. HERAKLES SLAYS BUSIRIS AND HIS FOLLOWERS: FROM A CÆRETAN HYDRIA.

_From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._

Fig. 80. SPARTAN KYLIX.]

Fig. 81. HERAKLES BRINGS CERBERUS TO EURYSTHEUS: CÆRETAN HYDRIA.]

of Satyr life, of the Heraklean legend, of Hermes and his theft of the kine, of the drunk and lame Hephaistos, of Europa carried by the bull over the sea, leave nothing to be desired in the way of original invention, healthy vigour, and naive vividness, and in their aversion to the typical and abstract they are diametrically opposed to Attic painting. The stocky, strong man Herakles with the curly hair who dispatches the inhospitable Pharaoh, Busiris, and his cowardly throng (Fig. 79), or who with the hound of hell frightens the Argive king into a wine jar (Fig. 81), are cabinet pictures of vigorous humour. The local colouring is also unmistakeable. The altar with volute profiles is an East Ionic architectural shape, the knowledge of the Egyptian and black races, of Egyptian priestly dress, of monkeys, can only have been obtained in Africa; the origin of the Busiris legend is only conceivable in the neighbourhood of the kingdom of the Pharaohs. Thus though the Caeretan vases found a local continuation in Etruria, because of this local colouring one cannot imagine them made by Ionian colonists in Caere.

On the other hand one may assume origin on Etruscan soil for another class of East Ionic style, only known from Etruria, called ‘Pontic,’ as having been wrongly localized on the Black Sea. The Asiatic-Ionian origin of the style is based on the vase shapes as on the choice, technique, types and application of the ornamental and animal decoration; and also the figures, the lines of Tritons and Nereids, riders and Scythians, heralds and Centaurs, and the legendary scenes, which are often under ornamental influence (Figs. 82 and 83) in execution and application, point to the same source. The ‘Pontic’ painters actually enrich our knowledge of East Ionic decorative motives by a series of combined lotus, palmettes, volutes, maeanders, by net patterns, leaf-friezes, etc., by a plentiful selection of animals, which includes the marine Centaur, with the Asiatic man-bull, and is fond of lines of guinea-fowls. But on the whole the class is very provincial and cannot be regarded as a clear source of evidence. It is questionable, whether obstinate persistence in stripe decoration, only reluctantly giving way to the picture field, would have been possible in the mother-country well on in the 6th century. The style is visibly departing further from its Greek starting point. Vases which represent Lanuvian Juno (B.M. Cat. II. p. 66) or Etruscan winged demons, show in subject what the style of itself betrays.

Two classes with scanty decoration, fixed as East Greek by many finds, can only be named for completeness sake; one, the ‘Bucchero’ ware long known in Etruria, which perhaps originated in Aeolis and which owes its black lustre not to glaze colour but to impregnation with charcoal and to polishing; the other, the ware with a great extension in South Asia Minor and Italy, either unadorned, or only decorated with stripes, which give important conclusions as to the development of vase-shapes.