Samuel Birch

“ A question that may be well asked by any visitor to a great museum is, What is the use of the study of Greek vases? The answer is, that no remains of Greek art have come down to us in such large quantities, except perhaps coins, and certainly none cover so long a period. Portraying as they do both the objective and subjective side of Greek life, they form perhaps the best introduction to the study of Greek archaeology in general. In no other class of monuments are the daily life and religious beliefs of the Greeks so vividly presented as in the painted vases. ”

“ And as in sculpture of the archaic period all figures have the same conventional smile, so on the B.F. vases gods, heroes, and mortals alike all pursue the actions in which they are engaged with the same unvarying expression. The contrast of violent action and calm unmoved physiognomy is often quaint, and almost grotesque. ”

“ Accessory colours are, however, seldom found on the reverses of the vases, which are always drawn and painted with the greatest carelessness.
The drawing is entirely free, and in fact errs on the other side, becoming careless and faulty; the forms are soft, and the male figures often effeminate. An extreme facility of hand has indeed proved the ruin of the vase-painter. The love of the far-fetched betrays itself in variety of posture and elaborate foreshortening; and in the richly embroidered draperies and studied settings of some scenes the influence of the theatre is obviously to be traced. ”

“ Thus the question arises, whether the art-remains of the Celts are sufficient to enable us to fix the position which that people occupied in the scale of nations?
It should always be borne in mind, that there is an art-history co-existent with the traditional or written history of every country, and that there is a relation subtle and philosophical, but not less certain, between all the products of the mind of man. ”

“ The subjects on the lamps, in fact, represent not so much the great masterpieces of art, as do coins or gems, but, like the Greek vases, the popular art of the day, and may be compared with the illustrations of the popular journals and magazines of our own time. On the whole, they are of great value to us as illustrating Roman life and religion, just as subsequently those on the Christian lamps are of inestimable importance for the light they throw on the early ages of our own religion. ”

“ The extraordinarily rapid advance, both in artistic conception and in power of execution, during the preceding fifty years, fostered by the concurrent advance in sculpture and painting, hastened the vase-painter to his ruin. With the attainment of perfection in drawing, dexterity and grace are his sole aim, and in place of vigour and originality we meet with over-refinement and mannerisms, and florid pictorial compositions executed in a careless manner. ”

“ Thus, all the deities are draped, and their costume differs in no respect from that worn by mortals; all alike wear the chiton, himation, or chlamys, and ornamentation of the drapery with embroidered patterns is no mark of distinction. It is only as the art advances in the B.F. period that the necessity for differentiation makes itself felt, and each deity becomes individualised by some peculiarity of costume or special attribute which makes it possible to recognise them without difficulty. ”

“ There is, in fact, in Roman pottery no clear line of distinction to be drawn between the various forms of drinking-cups or of jugs or dishes, as is the case with Greek vases; different forms again are found in different fabrics, and those typical of ornamented wares are not found in plain pottery, and so on. Nor must it be forgotten that in Roman pottery the ornamented wares are the exception rather than the rule. Where the Greeks used painted vases, the Romans used metal; and apart from the plain pottery, the forms are almost limited to a few varieties of cups, bowls, and dishes. ”

“ In its new home in Southern Italy this branch of Greek art had lighted on a very favourable soil. The great colonies such as Tarentum, Capua, Cumae, and Poseidonia, founded almost in the dawn of Greek history, were not only as completely Hellenic as Athens and Corinth, but in luxury and splendour even surpassed them at this period. Hence, art flourished in such towns far more readily than in the distant and comparatively barbarous regions of South Russia and North Africa. ”

“ For ordinary household purposes pottery was still essential, and besides that, there were many to whom services of plate and gold or silver vessels for use or ornament were a luxury unattainable. Hence it was natural that there should follow a general tendency to imitate in the humbler material what was beyond reach in the more precious, and the practice arose, not only of adorning vessels of clay with reliefs in imitation of the chased vases, but even of covering them with some preparation to give them the appearance of metal. ”

“ The limbs are fuller and thicker, the faces noble, the hair of the head and beard treated with greater breadth and mass, just as subsequently the painter Zeuxis gave more flesh to his figures in order to make them appear of greater breadth and grandeur, like Homer, who represented even his women of larger proportions. ”

“ On the black-figured vases he never appears, nor on the earlier red-figured ones is it possible to find many instances, but towards the end of the fifth century his popularity is firmly established, while on the Italian vases, especially the the later Apulian, his presence is almost invariable, not only in mythological scenes, but in subjects from daily life. As a single figure he occurs again and again, generally holding a wreath, mirror, box, fan, or some object which may be regarded as signifying a lover’s present. ”

“ There is indeed at first but little in Greek pottery to differentiate it from that of other nations possessing any decorative instincts. As M. Pottier [3] has pointed out, there is a universal law which manifests itself in nascent art all over the world: “More than once men have remarked the extraordinary resemblance which the linear decoration of Peruvian, Mexican, and Kabyle vases bears to the ornamentation of the most ancient Greek pottery. There is no possibility of contact between these different peoples, separated by enormous distances of time and space. ”

“ The line which distinguishes it from Greek pottery is, however, one of artistic evolution rather than of chronology, one of political circumstances rather than of geographical demarcation. In other words, it will be found that during a certain period the ceramic art had reached the same stage of evolution throughout all the Mediterranean countries; in Greece and Asia Minor, in the Crimea and in North Africa, in Southern Italy and in Etruria, a point of development had been reached at which the same kind of pottery, of very similar artistic merit, was being made in all parts alike. ”

“ It is impossible to determine when the manufacture of pottery was invented. Clay is a material so generally diffused, and its plastic nature is so easily discovered, that the art of working it does not exceed the intelligence of the rudest savage. Even the most primitive graves of Europe and Western Asia contain specimens of pottery, rude and elementary indeed, but in sufficient quantities to show that it was at all times reckoned among the indispensable adjuncts of daily life. ”

“ Throughout there is a remarkable variety, not only of subjects, but of ornaments and methods of composition, features in which the Greek vase-painters at all periods allowed themselves little freedom. The ornamentation, which usually borders the figures above and below, or still oftener occupies the whole surface available for decoration, includes such motives as conventional wreaths and festoons, scrolls of foliage, and egg-and-tongue pattern; a favourite device is the use of columns with spiral shafts, often surmounted by masks, between the figures. ”

“ The total height of the vase is barely 23⁄4 inches, and yet every detail in these friezes is marked with surprising care and accuracy, the shield-devices of the warriors, for instance, being drawn with wonderful minuteness. The three Boston vases are interesting for their subjects: on one is Bellerophon slaying the Chimaera; on the next, a hero attacking a lion with a human head on its back (a monster no doubt suggested by the Chimaera) ; the third has the favourite early subject of Herakles’ combat with the Centaurs. ”