Gerhard led the way in 1831 with his famous report on the Volscian vases;[18] numerous _savants_ have followed his example, and nearly every day the series which they have established are enriched by new discoveries. These vases, as we now know, were made in many places, at Athens, at Corinth, in the Greek cities of Africa and of Magna Græcia. They were eagerly sought after by some of the races whom the Greeks considered barbarous, by the Græco-Scythians of the Crimea, as well as by the Sabellians and the Etruscans; the latter imitated them now and then more or less awkwardly, but it is unanimously acknowledged that they are an essentially Greek product, the product of an art which sprang up with the first awakening of the Greek genius, and was extinguished about two hundred years before Christ, when the nation ceased to be creative and prolific. From analogy with all that has passed elsewhere we are justified in believing that, in each century, the painting of these vases, which would belong to what we call the industrial arts, followed with docility the example set by historical painters, and that it reproduced, so far as its resources would allow, the style and taste of their works. If we study each series of vases in the light of the judgments passed by the ancients upon the most celebrated painters of Greece, we may find, by a legitimate induction, traces now of the style of Polygnotus, now of that of Zeuxis, and again suggestions of the hands of Apelles or Protogenes; a vase here and there may have even preserved more or less faithful imitations of the actual works of those masters. These inductions and conjectures certainly demand both prudence and delicacy of perception, but their principle is incontestable, and the profit to be obtained from them is great. In the whole wreck of antiquity there is no loss which lovers of art find so hard to bear, as the complete annihilation of the works of those great painters whom the ancients put at least upon the same level as their most famous sculptors; and who would not rejoice to be able, by the remains of contemporary though inferior productions, to trace a reflection, distant and feeble perhaps, but yet faithful so far as it goes, of a whole art which has been lost to the world? [18] _Rapporto intorno i Vasi Volcenti_ (_Annali dell' Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica_, vol. iii. p. 5).