Samuel Birch

“ To many of us what is known as a classical education seems perhaps in these utilitarian times somewhat antiquated and unnecessary, but at the same time “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome” have not lost their interest for us, and can awaken responsive chords in most of our hearts. Nor can we ever be quite forgetful of the debt that we owe to those nations in almost every branch of human learning and industry. ”

“ But the internal evidence of the vases is of even greater value, not only for the political, but still more for the social history of Greece. By the application of painting to vases the Greeks made them something more than mere articles of commercial value or daily use. Besides the light they throw on the Greek schools of painting, they have become an inexhaustible source for illustrating the manners, customs, and literature of Greece. A Greek vase-painting—to quote M. Pottier— is not only a work of art, but also an historical document. ”

“ Moreover, it is always in the pottery that we perceive the first indications of whatever artistic instinct a race possesses, clay being a material so easy to decorate and so readily lending itself to plastic treatment for the creation of new forms or development from simple to elaborate shapes.
To trace the history of the art of working in clay, from its rise amongst the oldest nations of antiquity to the period of the decline of the Roman Empire, is the object of the present work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 very earliest and rudest remains of any people generally take the form of coarse and common pots, in which they cooked their food or consumed their beverages. And the fact that such vast quantities of pottery from all ancient civilisations have been preserved to us is due partly to its comparatively imperishable nature, partly to the absence of any intrinsic value which saved it from falling a prey to the ravages of fire, human greed, or other causes which have destroyed more precious monuments, such as gold ornaments, paintings, and statues of marble or bronze. ”

“ The technique presents several entirely new features, such as the use of a slip as a basis for the colours; the polished, brilliant, and even surface; and above all the lustrous black varnish, which was the peculiar pride of Greek potters, and is now a lost art. The comparative monotony of the colouring is probably due to a purely technical reason, namely, the difficulty of resisting the action of fire; otherwise such an artistic people would doubtless have exhibited the same richness of colouring in their pottery that we find in their frescoes. ”

“ A curious group of B.F. vases found exclusively in Italy, and belonging apparently to the middle of the sixth century, is marked by the extremes to which the mannerisms of the artists Exekias and Amasis are carried. They are without exception amphorae, and so similar in style that they must all have been produced by one workshop, if not one hand. In spite of the excellence of technique and careful drawing which they exhibit, showing a really advanced stage of B.F. vase-painting, they are lifeless and monotonous almost to grotesqueness. ”

“ What artistic sense was evinced by these primitive potters was shown exclusively in the forms, and in the tendency which is especially conspicuous in primitive times, though it lingered on through the history of Greek art, and again broke out in the period of the decadence, to combine the ceramic and the plastic idea, and to give to the vase the rude resemblance of the human form. ”

“ Our modern museums are so full of specimens of Greek sculpture, either originals or ancient copies of masterpieces, that we feel it possible to obtain an adequate idea of the genius of Pheidias or Praxiteles at first-hand, so to speak. But ancient literature clearly shows that painting was held by the Greeks in equally high estimation with sculpture, if not even higher. Consult the writings of the elder Pliny on ancient art. ”

“ But the fact remains that we have to look in other directions for the evidence we require to find. We have here and there a painted Greek tombstone, a Pompeian fresco, or the decoration of an Etruscan sepulchre to give us a hint; but while the first-named are far too inconsiderable in number to give us any idea of the art of their time, the two latter are merely products of an imitative art, giving but a faint echo of the originals.
Now, in the vases we have, as noted in regard to mythology, contemporary evidence. ”

“ We have also called attention to the prevalence of universal laws acting on the development of the early art of all nations.
Thus in dealing with the early history of Greece, before historical records are available, we are enabled by the pottery-finds to trace the extent of the Mycenaean civilisation, from Egypt to the Western Mediterranean; we may see Homeric customs reflected in the vases of the Geometrical period from Athens; and in the decorative patterns of the succeeding period we may see signs of close intercourse with Assyria and a knowledge of Oriental textile fabrics. ”

“ In the light of modern researches, we are prepared to find in Ionia a great centre for the art of painting in the archaic period. That this region inherited the characteristics of Mycenaean art has already been so abundantly shown that we need not hesitate to believe that, among other branches of art, that of fresco-painting was firmly established in the Asiatic colonies. The art of which Crete, Mycenae, and Tiryns have furnished such remarkable examples is hardly likely to have died out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The extensive finds of pottery in Greece, Asia Minor, Northern Africa, Italy, and elsewhere, including more especially products of the earlier periods, have enabled the students of the subject to trace the sequence of fabrics from the rude wares of Troy and the Greek Islands up to the graceful and finished products of the Athenian ateliers, and onward to the overgrown luxuriousness of the gigantic Apulian wares. ”

“ Coming lower down the coast of Ionia we meet with the home of an important school of painting in the sixth century, which seems to have centred in the flourishing cities of Phocaea, Clazomenae and elsewhere round the Gulf of Smyrna. The actual finds of such vases in the neighbourhood is not great, but is compensated for by the remarkable series of painted terracotta sarcophagi discovered at Clazomenae, the finest of which is now in the British Museum. ”

“ The numerous fragments of vases found on the Acropolis, which can all be dated anterior to 480 B.C., include many exceedingly beautiful and unique specimens of the transitional period of vase-painting, some having black, some red figures. [85] Although in few cases anything more than fragments have been preserved, yet these fragments are enough to show that the originals were masterpieces surpassing even the finest examples from the Italian cemeteries. They will, it is to be hoped, shortly be made known to the world by means of an exhaustive catalogue. ”

“ Those who are acquainted with the enormous number of painted vases now gathered together in our Museums, showing the important part they must have played in the daily life of the Greeks and the high estimation in which they were clearly held, as evidenced by the great care bestowed on their decoration and the pride exhibited by artists in their signed productions, may feel some surprise that so few allusions to them can be traced in classical literature. ”

“ It must never be forgotten that vase-painting is essentially a decorative art; but, as we shall see later in tracing its historical development, there is always a tendency to ignore the essential subserviency of design to use, and to give the decoration a more pictorial character. Many of the late vases are, in fact, pictures on terracotta. Again, there is a class of fifth-century vases with polychrome paintings on white ground which actually recall the method we know to have been employed by the great master of that century, Polygnotos. ”

“ The important rôle played by the black varnish is interesting, as showing the increasing tendency to reduce the painter’s labour to a minimum, combined with a striving after novelty and the rejuvenation of the art. The practice, no doubt, arose from the discovery of the painter that it was easier to paint the figures on the black in opaque colour than to trace them out in the clay and work round them with the varnish, especially in the case of the elaborate foliage patterns which played so important a part in Apulian vases. ”

“ Common to all vases alike is the fondness for ornamental patterns, such as the egg-pattern, wave-pattern, maeander, palmettes, and wreaths of laurel, myrtle, or ivy; though even these are guided by certain rules, much as on the black-figured vases. On the large bell-shaped kraters the decoration almost invariably consists of a laurel-wreath round the lip, maeander below the designs, and palmette patterns under the handles; and every shape of vase has its characteristic decoration. ”

“ The growing fashion of using only vases of chased gold and silver in preference to painted pottery made itself more and more felt both in Greece and Italy during the Alexandrine period. The same tendency which we have already noted, to reproduce as far as possible the characteristics and appearance of metal, may be observed in all the pottery of this period. Not only do the subjects moulded in relief reproduce the appearance of the chased and repoussé designs, but the shapes are those of the metal vases, and even in the black glaze there are attempts to produce a metallic effect. ”

“ The ornamental patterns on R.F. vases do not, generally speaking, call for so much attention as those of earlier style; they are on the whole used with great restraint and little variety, and are more subordinate to the designs than at any other period of vase-painting. The principal motives are the palmette, maeander, and egg-pattern; all others are comparatively rare. It is interesting to note, on the early amphorae and hydriae, and on the column-handled kraters down to quite a late date, the survival of the old panel system with its borders of ornament. ”

“ There was in Ionia no disturbing element, such as the Dorian invasion introduced into Europe, between Mycenaean culture and the spread of Oriental influences. The Greek cities in Ionia owe their origin to that upheaval, but their culture was not affected by it; and their founders brought their Mycenaean civilisation with them fresh from Greece to their new homes in Miletos, Ephesos, Phocaea, Chios, and Samos. ”

“ To enter here upon the wide and much-debated questions to which the discoveries of the last thirty years have given rise is of course beyond our province; but the pottery of the people to whom the name Mycenaean has been somewhat loosely given is of so homogeneous a character, although found in all parts of the Mediterranean, that it may be treated as a phase of Greek ceramics, independently of considerations of ethnography and chronology. First found in any quantity at Ialysos in the island of Rhodes, its exact position in the history of early art was not then recognised ”

“ Hardly any known fabric is unrepresented, nor the work of any known artist; though here and there another museum may have the advantage—as, for instance, the Louvre in early black-figured fabrics, Naples in vases of Southern Italy (especially the large specimens) , or Athens in various fabrics peculiar to Greece, such as the early vases of Thera and Melos, or the marvellous specimens of “transitional” handiwork found on the Acropolis of Athens. ”

“ The difficulties in the painting of Greek vases must have been numerous. In the first place, it was necessary for the artist to finish his sketch with great rapidity, since the clay rapidly absorbed the colouring matter, and the outlines were required to be bold and continuous, any joins producing a bad effect. Again, the vases were often painted while in an upright position, and the artist was obliged to stoop, rise, and execute his work in these difficult attitudes; nor could he remove the pencil from any figure which he had once begun. The eye must have been his only guide. ”

“ In the Greek colonies which were founded in Africa in the seventh and sixth centuries we find evidences of great industrial activity, and in some cases extensive remains of painted pottery, which exhibit a close connection with the fabrics more closely associated with Asia Minor. There is, however, one group of vases which seems to stand by itself, and which, though it may be ranked with the Ionian fabrics from its use of the white slip and from the original naturalistic treatment of the subjects, yet shows a marked independence both in technique and in decoration. ”

“ The year 1889 also saw the completion of the excavations of the Acropolis at Athens, which did much to settle the question of the chronology of Attic vases. Yet another sixteen years, and if the increase in actual bulk of material is relatively not so great, yet the advance in the study of pottery, especially that of the primitive periods, has been astounding; and while in 1857, and even in 1873, it was impossible to do much more than collect and co-ordinate material, in 1905 Greek ceramics have become one of the most advanced and firmly based branches of classical archaeology. ”

“ They are often modelled with great beauty and precision, especially the feet, which are admirably finished off, to effect which the vase must have been inverted. The modelling and separate attachment of the handle is represented in more than one ancient work of art (see Fig. 66) . In many cases the joining of the handles is so excellent that it is easier to break than to detach them. Great technical skill was displayed in turning certain peculiar forms of vases, and generally speaking the Greeks with their simple wheel effected wonders, producing shapes still unrivalled for beauty. ”