THE RED-FIGURED STYLE IN THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
How the sudden change of technique took place, how the idea suggested
itself, that instead of painting silhouettes on the ground of the clay,
figures drawn in outline should be left free to contrast with the black
background, is not yet explained. The inversion of the colour system is
not new. From Ionic, Corinthian, Attic, and Boeotian workshops we know
of light painting on a dark ground, and a plate from Thera has light
figures in added paint and a black background. But this is entirely
different from the red-figured style, which uses the ground of the clay
for its figures. Only late Klazomenian sarcophagi can be regarded as its
earlier stages, and it is quite possible that the new technique was
naturalized in Athens by East Ionic painters.
At any rate the idea fell on fruitful soil. The archaic mixture of
colour was long worn out, the simplification of colour-effect, by
increasing limitation to the two values, clay and glaze, was in full
swing, and the effect of big glazed surfaces had been tried in the
body-amphorae and in vessels completely covered with black colour (p.
108). But more than all else the revolution in figure-drawing which was
now setting in strong in the great art was striving for expression in
vase painting. A successor of the Athenian Eumares, Kimon of Kleonai,
according to Pliny, invented oblique views and foreshortening, rescued
the body from archaic stiffness, furnished limbs with joints, for the
first time rendered veins, and represented folds and swellings of
drapery; he must belong to the last third of the century; for his
predecessor is father of the sculptor Antenor, who worked, it is true,
for the old potter Nearchos (p. 103) but also for the young Athenian
Republic (510 B.C.) Though Pliny, after the fashion of ancient
historians, is too fond of asserting ‘inventions,’ this much is clear,
that after Eumares there was a breach with tradition in Athenian
painting, and that here, for the first time in the history of the world,
bonds were once for all burst, which hitherto had hardly been touched.
Naturally the vase-painters could not be left behind; but since the old
silhouette incised style was quite unsuited for the new liberties of
drawing, but on the other hand outline drawing on light ground ran
counter to the decorative purposes of the vases which used silhouettes,
the idea of inverting the colour-scheme must have been received with
enthusiasm among the vase-painters.
The new invention unites the enhanced freedom of movement of the
draughtsman with a decorative effect which is not inferior to that of
the old style. The warm red inner surface of the figures, which the
painter can animate by the brilliant sweeping ‘relief lines,’ splendidly
contrasts with the wonderful black lustre of the ground. The new style
too is a silhouette style, and uses the ornamental effect of the
figures. But it contains quite different possibilities, and of itself
moves away from the types of the old style and towards an individual
treatment of the figures. The contrast between the black silhouette of
the man and the white-filled figure of the woman falls away, also the
circular shape of the man’s eye connected with the incised style, the
gay dresses, and much besides. The red-figured style enters into the
characteristic working out of the human body and its parts, the study of
drapery folds and the rendering of movement in a living way. But growing
naturalism is in true Greek fashion contemporaneous with adherence to
types; formulæ once invented are retained and repeated by different
masters, until new discoveries by bolder spirits outdo them and put them
in the shade. In the archaic red-figured style this vigorous struggle
between formula and bold observation of nature offers an exciting
spectacle. Step by step the ground is won from the archaic style, till
after a struggle of about fifty years, about the time of the Persian
wars, a free rendering of nature is attained, which then lays the
foundation for the formation of a new and higher series of types, for
the style of Polygnotos and Phidias.
This period may be regarded as the culminating point of vase-painting
altogether, if emphasis is laid on the intensity of the line, and on the
intimate relation between artist and technique. In it artistic craft had
its greatest triumphs and created the most perfect synthesis between
ornamental types and delightful naturalism. Potters and painters were
never again so conscious of their performances as in this period, never
again felt themselves so much as rival individualities. Certainly the
old black-figured masters, Timonidas, Klitias, Exekias and Amasis,
cannot be denied personal expression. But the red-figured conquerors of
nature, each of whom in his own way breaks through the old system of
type, produce a far more differentiated effect. It is also a result of
the fresh current, which now enters vase-painting, that we can more than
ever follow the development of these individualities. The signatures,
which are preserved in such number from no other period, give an
insight, not merely into the manifold production, but also into the
growth of personalities and their struggle for ever new possibilities.
Among the signatures we must distinguish between potters and painters.
We must never assume that the ‘maker’ is responsible for the adornment
of his vases; it looks rather as if the painters had lived pretty
independently and been employed first by one and then by another
proprietor of a workshop. What it means, that now the potter signs, now
the painter, sometimes both together, and that many strong personalities
do not sign at all, cannot be made out in the present state of our
knowledge.
The love-names help to fix the chronology of the vases still more than
in the black-figured style. We saw that Andokides was _kalos_, when
Timagoras’ workshop was in full swing. When he is a full-blown painter,
the ‘Epiktetan’ kylikes and an Oxford plate celebrate the youths
Stesagoras, Hipparchos and Miltiades. If Miltiades is the victor of
Marathon, Stesagoras his brother, and Hipparchos the archon of 496 B.C.,
their ephebic years and these vases must be fixed about 520 B.C.
Memnon’s youth must fall about the same time; for one of the many
kylikes with his name, like a lekythos signed by Gales, shows the bard
Anakreon, who was entertained by the Pisistratidae, 522-514 B.C. The
painters Phintias and Euthymides praise the youth Megakles; now on a
votive pinax from the Acropolis this name was replaced later by another,
and it is a plausible guess to connect this erasure with the banishment
of a Megakles in 486 B.C., who about twenty-five years before might have
deserved these praises. The youthful beauty of Leagros is in the time of
the vase-painter Euphronios, and anyhow earlier than the destruction of
Miletos, in which a Leagros vase was shattered: the Leagros who fell in
battle as Strategos 465 B.C., must have been an ephebus in the last
decade of the 6th century. His son Glaukon, who was Strategos in 440
B.C., dates the vases which celebrate him with his father’s name a
generation later, so about 470 B.C. The only established fact from finds
does not contradict the ‘Leagros’ chronology; in the tumulus of
[Illustration: PLATE LVIII.
Fig. 103. ATHENA AND HERAKLES: FROM AN AMPHORA IN THE STYLE OF THE
ANDOKIDES PAINTER.
_From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._]
Marathon (490 B.C.) the latest offering was a sherd of the kylix type
with simple maeander (c.p. Fig. 115) which appears in the later
‘Leagros’ period. The Acropolis finds, which are prior to the Persian
conflagration (480 B.C.), have not yet been sorted and sifted.
According to this chronology the red-figured style must have made its
entry into Athens about fifty years before the Persian War, with which
it is customary to close the archaic period of Greek art, _i.e._, about
530 B.C.
We saw above, that the workshops of Pamphaios and Nikosthenes open their
doors to it: neither master breaks abruptly with the old style, which
often asserts itself together with the new on the same vase. This
contrast of the two styles is made clear by no one more obviously than
the potter Andokides on his fine amphorae, which are directly in line of
succession with Exekias; never is the essence of both styles so plain as
when on such a vase the same subject is treated by the same painter’s
hand in the old and in the new technique. The unsigned, but certainly
Andokidean Munich amphora (Fig. 103) is not one of these instances in
spite of the similarity of the subject; its black-figured Herakles scene
is certainly by a different hand from its red-figured, in which the same
delicate and original artist as on most of the signed works (the
‘Andokides’ painter) expresses himself. If this painter is identical
with the potter, Andokides was not merely in shape and decoration of his
vases but also as draughtsman a pupil and successor of Exekias. He has
inherited the feeling for elegant detailed drawing and for richly
ornamented garments. In the Herakles scene we see the same joy in a
harmonious picture as in the sea-voyage of Exekias (Fig. 93) and the
game of draughts (Fig. 96), which he actually copied; and the same
intense absorption in the subject makes all other works of Andokides
charming. In much the drawing reminds us of the teacher, particularly
the flat layers of drapery, which already resolve the chitons into rich
folds and end in the border more naturally, but do not attain the
life-like waving of the late works of Amasis. The filling of the space
with vine branches also is more in accord with the old technique than
the new. But the more advanced pupil is shown not merely by the renewed
study of the body, which appears in the drawing of hand and foot, in
pointed elbow and knee, and in Herakles’ leg shown through the drapery,
but also by the more compact composition and the individual treatment of
the heads.
The entirely red-figured vases by Andokides are not necessarily older
than the black-figured: the latest vase signed by him (in Madrid) still
combines both techniques. It must have been decorated by a third artist
less archaic in feeling, who also worked for the potter firm of Menon.
The Menon painter adds to the Andokidean framing patterns the row of
circumscribed palmettes, though not yet in their final shape, and
approximates in style to the young Euphronios and his rival Euthymides.
The ornament of the Madrid vase does not seem to have been devised as
border pattern. It must be derived from the tendril-composition, which
on red-figured vases takes the place of the Amasis ornament (Fig. 98)
and is in great favour as handle-ornament for kylikes. On the fine
amphora in Paris, which the transitional master Pamphaios made after the
patterns of Nikosthenes, and Oltos probably painted with scenes of
hetairai and satyrs (Fig. 104), it appears as handle decoration together
with an equally novel calyx and leaf ornament, which adorns the
shoulder. The free decorative method of composition, which can be traced
back through Amasis (p. 105) and Klazomenai to the Fikellura style (p.
61) is exactly in the manner of the red-figured style, which not only
shakes off the frieze constraint but
[Illustration: PLATE LIX.
Fig. 104. HETAIRA; SATYR AND MAENAD: AMPHORA WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE
POTTER PAMPHAIOS.]
[Illustration: Fig. 105.
THE ARMING OF HECTOR: FROM AN AMPHORA BY EUTHYMIDES.
_From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._]
[Illustration: PLATE LX.
Fig. 106. FOUNTAIN: FROM A RED-FIGURED HYDRIA BY HYPSIS.]
even the pictorial field: on the amphora, which the same painter
executed for the potter Euxitheos, he discards the old frame, which now
only separates black from black, and his example is followed sooner or
later by other artists.
It is true that the painter Euthymides, the contemporary of the young
Euphronios and gifted continuer of Andokides’ body amphorae, keeps the
frame on his vases, which are now purely red-figured. But he not only
helps the later palmette ornament to triumph over the old bands of
zig-zags and buds (Fig. 105) but enhances the unity of effect by
beginning to leave the ornament in the colour of the clay and to shape
it in red-figured manner, as was the case straight away with the handle
decoration (Fig. 104). Almost as a rule he puts in his field three
standing figures of large dimensions, in which he demonstrates to the
eye his progress in observation of nature. Under the garments bodies
begin to move, and their anatomy male and female is studied by the
artists of this period with tireless zeal.
The fruits of this study appear on the Munich Priam vase (Fig. 105), in
the drawing of hands, in the differentiated pose of the legs, in the
bold front view of the foot, still more on the reverse in the bendings
and turnings of three naked drunken men with full indication of muscles.
Certainly the limitations of his eye for perspective appear, when the
further from sight of the two chest muscles comes under the nearer one,
when the woman’s breast is turned outwards, when the transition of the
breast seen in front view to the legs in profile is not made clear, and
the head of the man walking to the right and looking round in archaic
fashion is still turned in profile to the left; the artist, it is true,
breaks through the old scheme of the figure in one place, but his
avoidance of lines shewing depth is so strong that he prefers to put
those parts of the body, of whose front and back he is conscious, simply
one beside the other. But it is just the contrast between the bold
attempt at progress on the painter’s part and the perspective
constraint, the feeling of conflict; if you like, that gives their charm
to the vase-paintings of this period.
Though the bodies are no longer as previously packed into the garments,
and drapery is rather subordinate to the treatment of the body, studies
in drapery also have been very fruitful. The contrast between the heavy
woollen himation, and the more delicate crinkles of the linen chiton is
plainly marked. The depths of the folds in the cloak, according as they
are close together or more freely distributed, are given in gradation by
thicker or thinner lines of colour; the chiton folds join in separate
masses and run out in the expressive so-called swallow-tail borders,
which divide the outline of the drapery much more rhythmically than the
layered borders of the ‘Andokides’ painter.
Chalkidian painters had already rendered scenes of arming. But those of
Euthymides mark a great psychological advance. The paternal anxiety of
the bald-pated old man and the nervousness of the mother’s pet making
his first début are finely expressed. The feeling for everyday life, in
an age which suddenly recognized in common things a world of artistic
problems, was keener than ever. What cared Euthymides about his subject
“Hector’s departure”? He drew a scene from his neighbour’s door and
added heroic names.
His best work the master left unsigned, the Munich amphora, on which
Theseus under protest from Helen (note the thumb) with gay impudence
carries off Korone (Fig. 107). The head of the ravisher, which gets its
increased liveliness not merely from the shifting of the pupil from the
centre inwards, may serve as example of the newly-conquered
possibilities of expression, and the extract from the picture may give
an idea of the charm of archaic art.
[Illustration: PLATE LXI.
Fig. 107. THE RAPE OF KORONE BY THESEUS; FROM AN AMPHORA BY EUTHYMIDES.
Fig. 108. DRUNKEN SATYR: FROM AN ARCHAIC RED-FIGURED KYLIX.]
[Illustration: PLATE LXII.
Fig. 109. RHYTON WITH RED-FIGURED DECORATION ON THE NECK.]
The Bonn hydria of Euthymides with the praise of Megakles shows a quite
new type of vase; in contrast to the offset black-figured shape, it
unites neck and body in an elegant curve, so that the old-fashioned
division of the decoration into two or three parts disappears. The same
fair youth is praised by his gifted colleague Phintias, whom we see from
his beginnings in the workshop of Deiniades expanding more and more
brilliantly, on a London hydria of the old shape; but the gracefully
moving boys, who in the picture while drawing water are addressed by an
older man, already carry water-pots of both types in their hands, and
Phintias himself occasionally adopted the later shape; as does the
painter Hypsis with the pretty well-house scene (Fig. 106), on which
again both vase-shapes are represented; for the girl, who is just
putting the cushion on her head, has placed a pitcher of the old type
under the lion’s head spout from which the water is pouring, while her
companion is lifting a hydria of the new shape already well-filled from
the satyr’s mouth. The intensive study of the female form is seen in
Oltos’ picture of a hetaira (Fig. 104) and in many other vase-paintings
of the period, and even when they represent girls clothed, the painters
are unwilling to sacrifice their newly-won knowledge to external
probability, and even under the drapery help the charm of the body
outline to assert itself, as Hypsis does on his well-scene (Fig. 106).
Like the Bonn hydria, the works of Euthymides witness to the emergence
of new vase-types, the Turin psykter and the unsigned Vienna pelike. An
idea may be obtained of the psykter (which is regarded as a cooling
vessel) by the later example in Rome (Fig. 104) in which the narrower
cylindrical lower part is however missing. The pelike is a kind of small
wineskin-shaped amphora. Even the transitional artist Pamphaios gave
Oltos a stamnos (cp. Fig. 146) to paint, and the early red-figured
artist Smikros painted one. The calyx-krater, a kind of enlarged cup
with low-set handles, seems to appear in the Leagros period (Fig. 113).
The remarkable vases in the shape of a head (Figs. 101, 109) in a
smaller form served for the reception of unguents and oil even in
Protocorinthian and early Ionic styles, but seem only at this time to
become popular as bumpers in the service of the drinker, and the pretty
heads of negroes and girls with the love-names Epilykos and Leagros form
the beginning of the development, which culminates in Sotades (p. 142).
The other drinking vessels, the kantharos, which is brandished by Duris’
satyrs (Fig. 122), the skyphos, from which Euphronios’ hetairai are
drinking (Fig. 112) are only continuations and refinements of old shapes
(Figs. 88, 43). The favourite drinking utensil is naturally the kylix,
which even for the “little master” period in fabrication and exportation
is at the head of the vases, and now not only receives its finest
finish, but also through the abundance of specimens preserved and the
richness of inscriptions renders the most valuable service to the
historian.
On the Andokides amphora (Fig. 103), the psykters of Euphronios (Fig.
112), and Duris (Fig. 122), the shape with offset rim appears. This late
specimen of the old type must have been more popular than the extant
painted examples lead one to suppose, but was certainly far less usual
than the shape with a single curve, which the red-figured style took
over with the eye kylikes and in the most delicate way simplified and
animated.
The history of these kylikes, like that of the big-bellied amphorae,
begins with examples of mixed technique. Andokides actually extended his
principle of the black-figured and red-figured halves of the vase to
kylikes: but happily this procedure was extremely rare. In the early
[Illustration: PLATE LXIII.
Fig. 110. DRUNKEN LYRE-PLAYER: FROM A KYLIX BY SKYTHES.]
[Illustration: PLATE LXIV.
Fig. 111. FLUTE-PLAYER AND DANCING GIRL: FROM A KYLIX BY EPIKTETOS.
_From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._]
kylikes the mixture of technique is rather to be found in the fact, that
in the interior the black-figured picture, which with its circle in the
colour of the clay contrasted so decoratively with the black-covered
edge, was still retained, while outside between the eyes, and gradually
also in their place, figures were inserted in the colour of the ground.
This procedure is _e.g._ connected with the names of the potters
Nikosthenes, Pamphaios, Hischylos and Chelis, and with the painters’
names Epiktetos and Psiax, and with the love-name Memnon. When Skythes
paints the outside in black-figured technique and the inside in
red-figured of a kylix (unsigned) dedicated to Epilykos, this is, like
the procedure of Andokides, an exception, and a conscious divergence
from the traditional relation. The transition to purely red-figured
technique compels the artists to separate the interior from the black
surroundings. Up to the Leagros period this separation is effected by a
narrow ring in the ground of the clay, which they leave uncovered by
black paint: on the kylikes the eye-decoration is gradually dropped. If
one takes the signatures of the masters of this group together with
those of the transitional kylikes and the contemporary big vases, the
number of the painters’ names comes to about a dozen, while the potters
are far more numerous; and thus in view of the mere accident of
preservation and the anonymity of other palpable artistic personalities
one can form an idea of the vigorous life, which then reigned in the
Kerameikos, the quarter of Athens where the potters lived.
It is interesting to follow the process by which the early red-figured
kylikes from very decorative beginnings rise to even greater freedom and
objectivity. Even the insertion of the figure between the eyes, which
comes from the Ionic ‘Phineus’ fabric, is meaningless and a mere
decorative scheme; and also, when he gives up the decoration with eyes,
the painter likes to put one or three figures as central motive between
the broad ornaments of the handles. Even the exterior pictures with
numerous figures, which occur in the late period of the potter Pamphaios
and in the full activity of the painter Oltos, are by no means free from
decorative schematism; arrangement in a row and heraldry still play a
part, and occasionally, as in the ‘little master’ style, winged horses
or sirens take the centre of the representation. Even the old Ionic
scheme of the horse-holding runner revives on a kylix of this group.
The interior too at first is still under strong decorative constraint.
Quite in contrast to the early Attic kylikes of the Klitias period and
to the Spartan, which often take no regard to the space in the
representation, the figure always adapts itself to the circular form,
extends its masses to fit the space, often presses head and feet against
the edge, and gives the interior a decorative and very animated
appearance, to some extent comparable to a rotating wheel. One imagines
the painters had studied and sketched the bending, crouching, running,
twisting, and turning of handsome youths often only to get motives for
their interior scenes. Skythes, the master of fine black-figured votive
tablets on the Acropolis, who liked to dedicate his kylikes to his young
colleague the painter Epilykos, in the interior of the kylix at Rome
(Fig. 110) goes beyond this stage, and fills the space more loosely with
the lyre held at right angles and the freely arranged knotted stick of
his singing boy; and Epiktetos, who painted his wonderfully subtle
figures in a long working life for various potters, Nikosthenes,
Hischylos, Pamphaios, Python and Pistoxenos, in the late Python kylix in
London (Fig. 111), under the influence of later masters, goes over to
the two figure picture. One can see from their bodies that they are
prior to the time of Euphronios and Euthymides. In his
[Illustration: PLATE LXV.
Fig. 112. HETAIRAI: FROM A PSYKTER BY EUPHRONIOS.
_From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._]
[Illustration: PLATE LXVI.
Fig. 113. HERAKLES AND ANTAIOS: FROM A KALYX-KRATER BY EUPHRONIOS.
_From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._]
vigorous lyre-player, whom we may identify with his favourite Epilykos,
Skythes does almost too much in the rendering of the chest-muscles and
makes the abdominal muscles seen in front view, and rendered in thinned
varnish, press against them in an impossible way; Epiktetos, who is for
a while disinclined for interior drawing, turns the breasts of his
dancing women outwards, and in their space-filling movement reminds of
old types. But the master of a Munich eye kylix has side-views of
shields, and draws a kneeling leg in back view, so that the sole is
visible and the calf almost disappears. Back views of the human body are
given also in kylikes from the workshop of Kachrylion, which takes us
over into the Leagros period just like the works of Phintias and Oltos,
whom we already know. For Phintias soon outdoes the theft of the tripod
of his early Deiniades kylix on a fine amphora at Corneto, and Oltos,
the painter of the Pamphaios amphora and most of the Memnon kylikes,
passes from the praise of Memnon to that of Leagros on the fine kylikes
from Euxitheos’ workshop.
The Leagros period might be described as the culminating point of the
dramatic tension prevailing in the older red-figured style. In it
Phintias breaks the archaic fetters of his youth, Euthymides creates his
decisive works, and we see the development of the great master
Euphronios, whom Euthymides boasts to have beaten on the Priam amphora
(Fig. 105). All the three vases, which bear the signature of Euphronios
as painter, praise the fair Leagros, _i.e._ the Munich Geryon kylix,
which appeared in Kachrylion’s workshop, which, like the Leagros kylikes
of Oltos, has under the exterior scenes a band of circumscribed
palmettes in the colour of the ground, the Petrograd psykter with the
hetairai (Fig. 112) and the Paris calyx-krater with Herakles and Antaios
(Fig. 113).
The harmonious indoors scene of the psykter in its quite neat and sure
drawing of the nude sets the finishing touch to the studies of Epiktetos
(Fig. 111), Oltos (Fig. 104), and their contemporaries, and does the
subject more justice than many pictures more advanced in perspective.
The leg of the thirsty Palaisto disappearing in the background recurs in
the Antaios scene, where the painter fully exhibits his anatomical
knowledge, and shows as little regard for the concealing skin as other
painters do for female drapery; the inner drawing is not even as usual
put on in thinner colour. The composition of the scene is not very
flexible. The struggle of the muscular but quite civilized Herakles with
the rugged giant (whose right hand is a masterpiece of drawing) is the
true theme, while the horrified women, who are almost old-fashioned in
their drawing, serve like club, quiver and lion’s skin, only as filling
for the triangular wrestling scheme, which was probably borrowed. A band
of palmettes, and another of palmette and lotus in the red-figured
style, vigorously frame the bold picture. The reverse of the Antaios
krater shows the artist well on the way to represent correctly the
course of the abdominal muscles from the chest to the pudenda, and thus
to give a convincing expression to the old distortion of the body.
Unfortunately we cannot further follow Euphronios on this path in the
light of signed vases, for the ten kylikes with his name, which fill the
gap between the youth of Leagros and that of his son Glaukon, were only
signed by him as potter and some of them were demonstrably handed over
to others to paint. That a progressive artist like Euphronios in this
whole period never again took brush in hand, is more than improbable,
and among the unsigned vases of the succeeding period his more mature
works must be represented.
The kylix made in the workshop of Sosias (Fig. 114) has been variously
ascribed to Euphronios and to the painter
[Illustration: PLATE LXVII.
Fig. 114. ACHILLES AND PATROKLOS: FROM A KYLIX WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE
POTTER SOSIAS.]
[Illustration: PLATE LXVIII.
Fig. 115. BOY CHASING A HARE: RED-FIGURED KYLIX.]
Peithinos: the remarkable work of art must rather belong to an unknown
third person (the ‘Sosias’ painter). The composition filling the space
suggests the old style, especially the pressing of the foot against the
rim: but the boldly fore-shortened right leg of Patroklos with the foot
viewed from above, known also to Euthymides and to Phintias in his
maturity, the full development of the bunches of drapery and the
swallow-tail edges, and above all the extremely bold attempt to open the
corner of the eye, lead us into the critical phase of the archaic
red-figured painting, the Leagros period. Only an intense study of the
model could lead this master so far from the beaten track; that with the
added names of Achilles and Patroklos he came into conflict with the
Iliad, mattered little to him. Furthermore on the Sosias vase a
technical innovation comes seriously into play, which is gradually
adopted by Euphronios (Fig. 112), Euthymides (Fig. 107), Phintias and
Hypsis (Fig. 106); the outline of the hair is no longer separated from
the black ground by the old hard incised line, but by a narrow line of
the colour of the ground. Within the kylikes, which praise the fair
Leagros, a change takes place in the framing of the interior picture; in
place of the ring in the colour of the clay, of which occasionally they
attempt to increase the effect by doubling, comes the maeander in
different varieties, first simple and continuous (Frontispiece and Figs.
108, 115, 126), then ever more frequently in broken up shape (Fig. 116).
The new frame comes _e.g._ on the London kylix, which by the hare-hunt
gives such a natural motive for the space-filling movements of the
running Leagros (Fig. 115). The Leagros of the kylix agrees so exactly
with that of the Antaios krater, that one may ascribe this advance to
Euphronios; for the line of the ground giving the hair outline and the
organic connection of chest and belly are beyond the stage of the krater
in question.
A further step forward on the part of the same master may probably be
seen in the Boston kylix, which praises both Leagros and Athenodotos
(Fig. 108). Never perhaps was the inmost nature of the satyr so fully
caught as in this fine example: he is squatting on the emptied pointed
amphora and positively breathing out an aroma of wine and wantonness.
His lifelike picture goes far beyond the Antaios krater, and a closely
connected Athenodotos kylix in Athens actually carries this vivacity
into the same subject, the wrestle of Herakles and Antaios.
If Euphronios thus surpassed himself one may believe him also
responsible for the next step, the ‘Panaitios’ stage, to which it is a
very short distance from the Athenodotos kylikes. To the transition,
that is about the end of the 6th century, belongs the Paris Theseus
kylix, signed by Euphronios as potter but without love-name. The boldly
drawn exterior seems to form the bridge to the style of the ‘Panaitios’
master, that vigorous painter, perhaps identical with the later
Euphronios, from whose hand comes the London Panaitios kylix with the
signature of Euphronios as potter. The rich and ornamental interior
(Frontispiece) is in a certain contrast with the exterior scenes, and is
so closely connected with the early works of Duris, that we may enquire,
whether Euphronios did not entrust the decoration of the interior to a
talented pupil with a great tendency to elaboration. But perhaps this
contrast is due only to the representative seriousness of the subject.
Young Theseus, in order to receive his rightful position as son of
Poseidon, has gone down to the bottom of the sea, and in the presence of
Athena is greeted by Amphitrite.
The time of Panaitios and that of Chairestratos, which partly coincides
with it, remove many hard features of the Leagros stage. The turnings of
bodies lose all violence: in the frontal stand of both feet, and in the
oblique view of
[Illustration: PLATE LXIX.
Fig. 116. AFTER THE BANQUET: FROM A KYLIX WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE
POTTER BRYGOS.]
[Illustration: PLATE LXX.
Fig. 117. A MAENAD IN FRENZY: FROM AN ARCHAIC RED-FIGURED POINTED
AMPHORA.]
the head, new possibilities are indicated. The pupil is now always in
the inner corner of the eye, though the bold experiment of the ‘Sosias’
painter is not generally adopted. Above all a new current enters the
drapery. The divisions of the chiton with patterns of folds gives way to
a more natural and uniform distribution: the play of folds at the edges
of the cloaks is generally emphasized by a thick pair of lines. These
tendencies become complete in the later Chairestratos and the Hippodamas
period, with which we get down to about 480 B.C.
The masters of this later date deal now quite freely and easily with the
achievements of their predecessors: the old rude vigour gives way to
ornamental elegance or swinging liveliness. The relation of figures to
space also alters: the forms move more freely, are less confined by
space, and are surrounded with air. Thus the free decoration of the
Oltos amphora (Fig. 104) asserts itself once more. The small so-called
‘Nolan’ necked amphorae, and the popular amphorae of Panathenaic shape,
only reserve one figure or group in the black surface. The fine and
elegant effect of this ‘Nolan’ decoration often attacks other types of
vases, to which is now added the bell-krater (cp. Fig. 123 centre).
Of these later masters, the one who keeps most the massiveness and
dignity of the older style is the ‘Kleophrades’ painter, who grew up in
the Leagros period and has furnished one of his works with the potter’s
signature of Kleophrades, son of Amasis. As an example of his style let
us take the Munich pointed amphora belonging about to the Panaitios
period: the passionate frenzy of frantic Maenads has never been more
perfectly caught than in the back-tossed head of the rushing waver of
the thyrsos (Fig. 117). The ‘Kleophrades’ painter was a pupil of
Euthymides: but for a number of his contemporaries it can be shown that
they won their spurs in the celebrated studio of Euphronios. It is true
that we only have evidence in an inscription of activity in the service
of Euphronios for one painter denoted by name, and malicious accident
has deprived us of all but the last four letters of his name. Onesimos,
as his name is usually restored, combines in simple composition on his
kylix riders and boys leading horses, and thus is the predecessor of the
‘Horse’ master. On the other hand the master of the Troilos kylix in
Perugia, which Euphronios also signed as potter (the ‘Perugia’ master)
inherited more of the fire and dramatic vigour of the ‘Panaitios’
master. His Munich Centaur kylix is worthy of the great teacher, and the
interior (Fig. 126) is equally perfect as filling the space and as
rendering animated life. The shield in profile view, which shows
indication of shading, the Centaur’s head, and especially the grandiose
foreshortening of the horse-body, point beyond the Panaitios period.
To this group must have belonged the ‘Brygos’ painter, who in earlier
works, _e.g._, in the clearly and vigorously composed Iliupersis in
Paris (Figs. 118 and 119), is still strongly inspired by the
achievements of the Perugia master, and later develops the fiery vigour
of his youthful period in ever more delicate and elegant shapes. He is
fond of shaded shields, hairy bodies and cloaks adorned with spots.
Perhaps the finest work of his maturity is the interior of the Würzburg
kylix (Fig. 116), on which a young Athenian, supported by the hands of a
girl, relieves himself of the wine he has imbibed too freely. The
picture not only in its free adaptation to space and in the sure hand
with which the movement of body and drapery is rendered, but especially
in the fine animation of the expression, is a worthy last note of
archaic art. The unsigned Vienna skyphos of the Brygos painter (Fig.
120) must be placed between the Paris and Würzburg kylikes. It also
gives a
[Illustration: PLATE LXXI.
Figs. 118 & 119. THE SACK OF TROY: FROM A KYLIX WITH THE SIGNATURE OF
THE POTTER BRYGOS.
_From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._]
[Illustration: PLATE LXXII.
Fig. 120. SKYPHOS WITH THE RANSOMING OF HECTOR.
Fig. 121. THESEUS DESERTS THE SLEEPING ARIADNE (?): FROM THE EXTERIOR OF
A KYLIX.]
fine picture full of life: Achilles has placed under the table the dead
body of Hector, which he daily drags round the walls of Troy, is
reclining at his meal, and talking to his charming cup-bearer, as if he
did not hear the appeal of the old Priam for his son’s corpse and did
not see the presents brought in by the attendants. The clear dramatic
disposition is as much in the manner of the master as the free pose of
the cup-bearer with weight on one leg, and the delicate psychological
animation of the countenances. The kylix in Corneto (Fig. 121), the
outside of which has been interpreted as the secret departure of Theseus
from the sleeping Ariadne, is at least closely related to the works of
the ‘Brygos’ painter. In the workshop of Euphronios the youthful Duris
must also have been a pupil. For his earliest work, the Vienna kylix,
with an arming scene, painted for the potter Python, is quite under the
influence of the Panaitios master, and can only be recognized as the
work of a painter of another tendency by the greater elegance and
slimness of the figures, and the more schematic composition.
In the kylikes with the names of Panaitios and Chairestratos, it can
still be traced to some extent, how out of the docile imitator of the
Panaitios master comes the real Duris, the routine draughtsman, who puts
down his elegant figures with almost academic objectivity and who cares
more for the uniform decorative effect of his neat silhouettes than for
complicated compositions of life. The pair of Berlin kylikes, perhaps
made by Kleophrades, and the kantharos, on which Duris signs as potter
and painter, show as plainly as possible this gradual realization of
independence, and also pass more and more, though not finally, from the
artificial fold packets of the chiton to a uniform system of wavy lines.
How entirely Duris altered his style even during the Chairestratos
period, is shown _e.g._ by the Vienna kylix, painted for Python with the
contest for the Arms of Achilles, which not merely in its more elegant
shape, but also in drawing and the relation of the figures to the space,
is widely distant from the arming scene on a kylix of the same workshop.
The fine Eos kylix in the Louvre, which Duris painted for the potter
Kalliades and dedicated to Hermogenes, the London Theseus kylix, and
probably also the fine London psykter with the love-name Aristagoras
(Fig. 122) belong to this period. The satyrs of this psykter, who
instead of joining in procession play all kinds of unprofitable tricks
behind the back of the leader of the chorus, need only be compared with
their fellows on the Boston kylix, and one can recognize at once the
routine hand and slighter artistic endowment of the master, but also the
more elegant and easy draughtsmanship of the later time.
In the later period of the artist (about 480 B.C.) we must put along
with their congeners the kylikes with the love-name Hippodamas, the
finest of which is the Berlin school vase (Fig. 124). In the drapery of
the teachers and pupils, who are here assembled in the class-room,
nothing of archaic stiffness remains. If even the Leagros period had
made the cloak folds come to a natural end, they now bend round their
ends and pave the way for the “drapery eyes,” which in the next period
so naturally characterize the packings in the material.
The great development, which is evidenced for Duris by his many
signatures, suggests considerations. We ask whether other masters too
did not fundamentally change, and whether _e.g._ Euphronios did not
develop out of the ‘Leagros’ stage to that of the ‘Panaitios’ master and
the Perugia painter, and on his later works include the painter’s
signature in that of the potter’s firm, _i.e._ whether works like the
Munich Centauromachy (Fig. 126) do not represent a late phase of this
gifted painter, who can be proved to have lived into the ‘Glaukon’
period.
[Illustration: PLATE LXXIII.
Fig. 122. HERMES AND SATYRS: FROM A PSYKTER BY DURIS.
_From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._]
[Illustration: PLATE LXXIV.
Fig. 123. DRUNKEN MAENADS: FROM A KYLIX WITH THE SIGNATURE OF THE POTTER
HIERON.]
Of the other painters of this period, we must content ourselves with
naming three, the Berlin master, Makron, and the Bronze-Foundry master.
The ‘master of the Berlin amphora’ even surpasses Duris in elegance, and
is fond of introducing his slim elastic figures in ‘Nolan’ style, _i.e._
isolated on a dark background.
Makron, who painted almost all the vases on which Hieron’s signature as
potter is found, studied by choice in the Palaestra, where boys
performed gymnastics and were addressed by older men. A Berlin kylix
(Fig. 123), like several works of his hand, introduces us to Bacchic
revelry, an excited chorus of drunken and vigorously gesticulating
maenads, whose bodies are not concealed by the rustling pomp of folds:
the ‘kolpos’ or fold of the chiton drawn up through the belt, which
Brygos also is fond of, is more transparent than the upper and lower
parts of the complicated garment. These figures in which all is life,
movement and expression, should be compared with those of the Andokides
painter or even those of Euphronios, in order to realize, how in these
few decades the liberation from archaic stiffness and adherence to type
was almost tempestuously accomplished.
We take leave of the archaic styles with the charming picture of an
anonymous painter, the ‘master of the bronze foundry,’ who on a Berlin
kylix (Fig. 125) transplants us into the interior of the workshop of a
sculptor in bronze. A workman is poking the oven, another is handling
the bellows, the assistant looks on, the master is working at a statue,
not yet fully put together: so intimate is the contact with life in this
scene. Everything interested the vase-painters of this time equally;
they have spread out before us human life, got their material from every
quarter, and wherever they laid hold of it, it was interesting. How
closely they came to grips with their subject, how they tried to be
clear, and to give a lively picture of what they saw, and how under
their hands the object at once changed into the artistic type, the human
body into the clearly defined study of the nude, the garment into a
thing of decorative life, and an assemblage of human beings into an
ornamental figure composition!
[Illustration: PLATE LXXV.
Fig. 124. SCHOOL-SCENE: FROM A KYLIX BY DURIS.
Fig. 125. BRONZE-FOUNDRY: FROM A KYLIX WITH THE “LOVE-NAME” OF
DIOGENES.]
[Illustration: PLATE LXXVI
Fig. 126. CENTAUROMACY: FROM A RED-FIGURED KYLIX.]