Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)Buschor, Ernst
History
Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)
Buschor, Ernst
Vase-painting, Greek
Both encouraged and warned by such examples, one must look through the
vase-painting of this period for other traces of Polygnotan painting,
especially on vases which agree in subject with the wall-paintings of
which we have accounts, and not only in the freedom named, but also in
the inferiority of the execution to the conception, show of what spirit
they are the offspring. One can never expect copies. The very fact that
exact replicas never occur among the Polygnotan types, shows that the
vase-painters dealt with the borrowed property according to their own
individuality and for their definite purpose. So the two cases we have
selected must be judged individually. The ‘Penthesileia’ master was
probably stimulated to his treatment of the theme by a big Amazon
painting; but the clever painter not merely translated this impulse into
his own brilliant technique and adapted it to his circular field, but
also extended over it his personal great feeling, and translated the
picture into his personal style, so that it has the effect of a natural
continuation of his earlier works. The ‘Argonaut’ master had no concern
with this great ‘Ethos’ or the delicate polychrome technique. He
borrowed more superficially, took an extract from the big scene of his
model in his strong relief-lines, and emphasized the individual
characteristics rather than the dash of the original. In realism, his
bearded hero holding a spear is not inferior to the contemporary warrior
of the New York krater (Fig. 130). Great painting went on tempestuously
developing, and in the next age burst its fetters of colour and space in
a manner which could not but deter even the boldest vase-painter from
imitation, if he were not to shake off every sane regard for the
preservation of his surface-effect. So reflexions of wall-painting on
vases become rarer, and the ‘Polygnotan’ vases remain an episode.
Naturally there were many vase-painters who did not enter this dangerous
ground: nay, the majority did not do so. With many the avoidance of a
big surface went so far that they divided the outside of a calyx-krater
or big ‘aryballos’ into two friezes and filled them with small figures
in defiance of constructive considerations. Out of the series of these
‘little masters,’ who beside the big-figure painters continued the
traditions of the elegant style, let us mention _e.g._ the painter who
decorated the box signed by the potter Megakles (Figs. 136-7) with
charming scenes from women’s apartments, and the lid with five comic
hares; or the author of the girl plying the top on a white-ground kylix
of the potter Hegesibulos (Fig. 133), a potter who was active as early
as the Leagros period; and especially Sotades, from whose workshop came
not only plastic vases in the shapes of horses, sphinxes, knuckle-bones,
crocodiles devouring negroes, etc., but also white-ground kylikes of
most elegant shape, whose exquisite interiors, like the friezes of
those
[Illustration: PLATE LXXXIII.
Figs. 136 & 137.
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