Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)Buschor, Ernst
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Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)
Buschor, Ernst
Vase-painting, Greek
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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