Greek vase painting

“ For nothing is more wonderful than the depth of meaning which nations in their first days of thought, like children, can attach to the rudest symbols; and what to us is grotesque or ugly, like a little child's doll, can speak to them the loveliest things. I have brought you to-day a few more examples of early Greek vase painting, respecting which remember generally that its finest development is for the most part sepulchral. You have, in the first period, always energy in the figures, light in the sky or upon the figures ”

“ From the very beginning of Greek vase-painting there may be observed an endeavour to dispose the ornamental patterns in accordance with some system; and even though in some cases, as in the Cypriote Geometrical vases, there is an offence against the canons of art, yet at all periods the prevailing effect is one of symmetry and taste. It may be thought that in some respects there is a poverty in the variety of ornaments employed—as compared, for instance, with mediaeval art ”

“ Restlessness, the symptom of nerves overwrought, is a feature of decadence, which we can observe in the late Greek vase-paintings. The spaces are covered with trivial ornament, the drawing is slack, the sole aim is prettiness. The vigour of the composition is frittered away upon trivial details.{266} In short, the name of the disease from which Greek art was to perish is Vulgarity. Idealism without romanticism was the secret of Greek art at its best. When we find romance without ideals we have reached the nadir.
Late Greek Vase-painting: from a Pelike in the British Museum. ”

“ The next development of R.F. vase-painting, which presents all the characteristics of the best period of Greek art and of the highest point to which that art attained, is that called the fine style. In this the influence of painting first really begins to manifest itself, especially that of the Polygnotan school, which covers the years 470–440 B.C. It is shown alike in composition and in drawing, and to a lesser degree in the colouring; but the general use of colours and gilding on vases really belongs to the succeeding stage. ”

“ More nearly correct was the principle laid down by Robert, in his famous book Bild und Lied, that no vase painting of the fifth century B.C. shows the influence of heroic legends as recast by the tragedians and produced in the theatre. Before the year 400 B.C. one should not expect to find scenes upon the vases that are the direct outcome of the tragic drama. This, however, is going too far to the other extreme. There is a mean that may be struck, and this is, as will appear, more in accord with the present knowledge of Greek ceramics. ”

“ The usual word ζωγραφία for painting, and ζωγράφος for drawing-master, suggests to us that figure-drawing was the early and the principal branch of the art known and taught. From the earliest times rude figures had been scratched and colored on vases, and the number of vase-painters in historical Greece must have been so considerable as to disseminate some general feeling for the art, though we hear of no amateur vase-painting, such as is in fashion among ladies of our own day. On the other hand, landscape-painting was of late growth and very imperfect development. ”

“ In the making of Greek vases we can distinguish four separate stages: (1) Preparation of the clay; (2) Modelling (a) on the wheel, (b) by hand, or (c) from a mould; (3) Baking; (4) Painting, glazing, and other decoration. The last-named is not absolutely essential, i.e. a vase, especially one for ordinary daily use, may be considered complete without it. Further, the three first stages are practically the same at all periods of Greek art, whereas the systems of painting and decoration are subject to local variations and chronological development. ”

“ Greek literature was The arts. no longer synonymous with epic poetry. Some of its most distinctive forms had not yet been evolved; indeed, it is only quite at the end of the period that prose-writing begins; but both lyric and elegiac poetry had been brought to perfection. In art, statuary was still comparatively stiff and crude; but in other branches, in architecture, in vase-painting and in coin-types, the aesthetic genius of the race had asserted its pre-eminence. Philosophy, the supreme gift of Greece to the modern world, had become a living power. ”

“ The relation between the two is like that which obtains, in a painting, between color and line, on the one hand, and representation, on the other. When the first level of beauty is richly developed on its own account, it becomes ornament. In a Greek vase, for example, there is a beauty of symmetrical, well-proportioned shape, delicate coloring of surface, and decorative painting, which might be felt by people who knew nothing of its use; and, in addition, for those who have this knowledge, a beauty in the fine balance of parts in the adjustment of clay to its final cause. ”

“ Then the thrill of my discovery caught me again: 'Its value is greater than you realize, Lutz. You saw nothing strange in finding a vase by Euphronios in the Persian rubbish? Why, wake up, man! If Euphronios and his contemporaries lived and painted before the Persians, it simply means that the whole chronology of Greek vases must be pushed back half a century. And that’s going to mean that Greek painting developed before Greek sculpture, instead of the contrary, as we’ve always believed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such improvements would soon raise such a barrier between fresco-painting and vase-painting,—which by its very nature must be simple and architectonic,—that vases can no longer be used with confidence as evidence for contemporary painting. The stories told us by Pliny of the lives of Greek painters are mostly of a trivial and untrustworthy character. Some of them are mentioned in this Encyclopaedia under the names of individual artists. We can only discern a few general facts. Of Agatharchus of Athens we learn that he painted, under compulsion, the interior of the house of Alcibiades. ”

“ In attempting a detailed description of the Graeco-Phoenician pottery, it will be seen that any chronological system is impossible. The conservative tendency of Cypriote art caused the same methods of decoration to be employed with extraordinary persistency during a period of time which saw the whole development of Hellenic vase-painting from its earliest beginnings to its decline, and though there is a certain amount of variety, there is no development properly speaking, and the latest fabrics are, artistically speaking, on the same level as the earliest. ”

“ To a certain extent it is difficult to treat the subject at all in a handbook, as, owing chiefly to want of material, the existence of an Ionian school of vase-painting has only been realised of late years, and it is as yet too early to sift proofs from theories, or to give a succinct and systematised account of the development and achievements of this school. ”

“ Medeia’s fixed determination to ruin all her enemies at one blow and to root out the whole royal house in a day (vs. 373 f.) is expressed in the extended scene here given, in a manner well calculated to inspire the beholder with much that lies between the lines in Euripides. There is absolutely no reason for claiming this scene as an extension of that given in the poet, and therefore based upon a post-Euripidean tragedy. One who denies the vase painter the right to introduce figures foreign to the poet fails utterly in comprehending the spirit of the fourth and third century vase painting. ”

“ The colouring, though rather brilliant, is simply treated, and the figures are kept strictly to one plane without any attempt at complicated perspective. Other valuable specimens of Greek art, found at Herculaneum and now in the Naples Museum, are some small paintings, one of girls playing with dice, another of Theseus and the Minotaur. These are painted with miniature-like delicacy on the bare surface of marble slabs; they are almost monochromatic, and are of the highest beauty both in drawing and in gradations of shadow—quite unlike any of the Greek vase-paintings. ”

“ The painting is a thoroughly ugly and, from an artistic standpoint, worthless specimen that represents the very decadence of ceramic art [232] . The vase is a slender amphora with three zones of 125pictures; ours is the middle one. On the left a woman in chiton and mantle sits with head turned to the right, her left hand resting on a sceptre or staff and her right on her knee. She wears a necklace and on one arm a bracelet. Standing before her with outstretched right hand is a bearded male figure in short chiton and mantle, and a spear in his left ”

“ Others have more complete presentations of potteries, with men engaged in the different processes of vase manufacture, modelling, painting or supplying the kilns with newly-made wares.
The Painting of Vases.—We may distinguish three principal classes of painted pottery, of Which two admit of subdivision.
1. Primitive Greek vases with simple painted ornaments, chiefly linear and geometrical, laid directly on the clay with the brush. The colour employed is usually a yellowish or brownish red passing into black. The execution varies, but is often extremely coarse. ”

“ Pub. Baumeister, Denkmäler, ii. p. 1118; Overbeck, Bildwerke, pl. 29. 9; Reinach-Millingen, Peintures, ii. 68; also as frontispiece to the 4th ed. of Paley’s Aeschylus. He disposes of it in a line or two, and, with the usual accuracy which characterizes philologists when dealing with matters of archaeology, says the vase is ‘probably nearly contemporaneous’ with the Eumenides (p. 584) . The composition is remarkably like the Assteas painting, Wiener Vorlegeblätter, ser. i. pl. 7. The figures of Apollo and Kadmos, as well as the two Athenas, have much in common. ”

“ The rules of balance and symmetry in composition which are followed in Greek decorative art are still more to be discerned in the paintings of vases, which must serve, in the absence of more dignified compositions, to enlighten us as to the methods of Greek painters. Great painters would not, of course, be bound by architectonic rule in the same degree as the mere workmen who painted vases. Nevertheless we must never forget that 474 Greek painting of the earlier ages was of extreme simplicity. ”

“ Perfection tends to perfection, and ugliness to ugliness. Therefore, let the perfect man and the perfect woman marry, that thus we may have the perfect race once more. To bring this to pass we must insist upon perfect form and perfect decoration in all things about us; we must know beauty and value it. One step to this great end is to study the Greek vase. The next step is to make every home a temple of art.
What can we not believe of such a house as that of Aspasia in Athens, when she was virtually the wife of Pericles in the best period of Greece? ”

“ The number of our vase-paintings, however, increases steadily, and whole classes, such as the early vases of Ionia, are being marked off from the crowd, and so becoming available for use in illustrating the history of Hellenic civilization.
The study of Greek art is thus one which is eminently progressive. ”

“ The issue rests with the jury of millions who use and admire burnt clay. Their wants, their sense of beauty and their purse will render the verdict. We might more safely and properly say that they will render a number of verdicts, all in their way and sphere just and true, since in no one of the arts so much as in this of all times and all nations is it so difficult to subject the infinitude of styles and fancies to one rigid canon. That the Greek vase is an absolute exemplar in grace and elegance of form every one hastens to concede. ”

“ Starting with what the poet gave them and holding this in mind as a guide and inspiration in certain details, the painters proceeded to create, as independent artists, a similar scene, transfused, however, with their own alterations. It is to be expected that in the over-filled vase paintings of Apulia and Campania one will find figures that show a wide liberty on the part of the painters, and that illustrate well how much the severe methods of the Athenian vase painters had been altered in Magna Graecia. ”

“ Their artistic merit was often of a high order, though this excellence was somewhat over-balanced by the figures being arranged to occupy the entire area of a gem’s surface. As Dr. Walters of the British Museum observed, “this horror vacui, or dread of leaving a vacant space, was characteristic of Greek artists at all periods.”
The Transitional Period proper, from 500 B.C. to 450 B.C., produced very fine gems with genre subjects. These were probably influenced somewhat by the freedom acquired by the Greek vase-painters, whose art reached its perfection in that era. ”

“ It is unlikely that they were used by the Athenian potters, since the Greek black glaze is so thin it would not be apt to run, but for the Roman ware with metallic glaze they were essential, and the marks they left are visible on the feet of the vases. [60] On one of the British Museum stilts (fig. 89) are remains of a greenish glaze from such a vase. No moulds for the Athenian plastic ware have to my knowledge been found. But moulds for the later wares, such as the Arretine, are of course plentiful. They are invariably made of burnt clay. ”