Ernst Buschor

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)

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PLATE XIV.Fig. 27. CRETAN MINIATURE JUG.

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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 mythopoeic 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

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

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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.

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,

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.

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

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

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 (p?t??a ?????) 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.

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

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

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

from the traditions of the brilliant Geometric period, which remained longer operative in the very ceramic and non-metallic Attic school than in the Argive-Corinthian, one suspects also influences from Eastern Greece. According to the evidence of vase finds, Athens was then in connection with Naukratis. Thus one may refer the painting of white on the figures, which is only occasionally employed at Corinth, but on the VurvÁ vases often takes the place of the red, to the influence of the East, which had long known it, and explain in the same way many a similarity with the East in the motley array of animals.

Beside the common ware, purely decorative, technically trivial and poor, naturally the subject-vases went on, as at Corinth. It is not only the ‘runners with bent knee’ mingled with the animals, the draped men and riders, who maintain the connection with the older figure-painting; the traditions of the Nessos vase and its parallels continued on big and carefully executed vases. These vases are to Attic pottery, what the works of Timonidas were to Corinthian; they give up filling ornament, individualize the world of figures out of its ornamental constraint, give the subject-style the spatial freedom, which it needs for its evolution. Just as we could follow this transitional style in Corinth on a vase and pinax of Timonidas, so it meets us in Attica at the same time in vases with decoration in bands, necked amphorae, kraters, and cauldrons, and in big-bellied amphorae with special field for the subject, which take the place, in some measure, of sepulchral votive ‘pinakes,’ and are decorated with a female bust or a horse’s head, placed on a panel reserved in the black ground. This vase with special field, which arose from the needs of representation, only transitorily enters the service of animal decoration, and then becomes the chief vehicle of the new style, whose beginning we have reached with the last-named vases.

Attic pottery of the 7th century exercised great influence upon its Boeotian and Eretrian neighbours, where an independent artistic spirit never existed. One might describe these dependent manufactories as provincial branches of the Attic, had they not been influenced by other models as well. The big Boeotian amphorae with tall broad neck, the decoration of which consists chiefly of a pictorial frieze at the level of the handles, divided vertically, are imitated from vases of the islands (p. 25). The best known instance, from Thebes, shows on one side the Oriental goddess flanked by lions, on the other a flying bird and spiral ornamentation. This metope decoration with flying birds and Orientalizing volutes and palmettes called forth a special Boeotian class, which some conservative workshops went on producing with great tenacity to the end of the 6th century. It excels in tall-stemmed kylikes with white slip and colour accessories in red and yellow. Other workshops, like those of Pyros and Mnasalkes, imitated the Protocorinthian and Corinthian wares, quantities of which were imported; in the 6th century one enters an Attic sphere of influence. Similarly Attic and island influences are found side by side at the neighbouring Eretria in Euboea.

The Cycladic manufactory, to which the Boeotian and Eretrian imitations point, cannot yet be followed beyond the early Orientalizing stage. On the amphorae with white slip already described, to which class belongs the Stockholm vase with the roebuck (Fig. 50), and on the closely allied griffin jug from Aegina (Fig. 51), severely stylized flowers and tendrils enter the not very rich Geometric ornament, the new cable meets the old meander in the same frieze, rows of triangles are enclosed by spirals; in the metopes of the shoulder stripe appear, surrounded by scanty filling ornaments, simple animal representations,

PLATE XXV.Fig. 51. CYCLADIC JUG WITH GRIFFIN’S HEAD FROM ÆGINA.