Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)Buschor, Ernst
History
Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)
Buschor, Ernst
Vase-painting, Greek
How even the drapery becomes a vehicle of expression and every fold
breathes the greatness of the whole picture, may become clearer if we
look at the ‘Eriphyle’ of a pelike at Lecce (Fig. 139), with which we
also pass the middle of the century. This picture must be compared to
the Corinthian Amphiaraos krater (Fig. 66) to see, how in the interval
of 120-130 years the soul of art has changed. The later master
represents not the dramatic culmination of the story but the
psychological climax, when Polyneikes offers to the wife of Amphiaraos
the seductive necklace, for which she will send her husband to death. As
often on vases of this period, two figures stand calmly facing one
another, but they are here united by most delicate psychology; Eriphyle,
simply attired in plain peplos, is full of an inner life which
circulates through her body to the finger-tips. This harmonious union of
a monumental type with intimate feeling is at the beginning of the most
Greek period of Greek art-history, the most human period of the history
of mankind, the age of Pheidias.
If we name the following decades of the history of vase-painting after
Pheidias, we do not mean that he was in very close relations with the
art of the vase-painters. But the artist, who in the Parthenon frieze
introduced that inconceivable nobility of form, who in the West side of
the frieze developed the play of lines to new greatness, to heighten it
in the pediment to a great outburst of passion, impressed this age so
much with his nature that one cannot imagine the vase-paintings as
unaffected by this powerful influence.
Never was Greek art so much an art of expression as at this period. As
if in response to the search for a word to describe this new expression,
the beautiful musical pictures of the time present themselves. Since the
Geometric style art had continually represented musical performers, but
it was reserved for the age of Pheidias to give pictorial expression to
the effect of musical sounds on men. The krater from Gela (Fig. 140)
belongs to the early Periclean age; the sure touch in the rendering of a
twist of the body and its rounded form is now a matter of course even in
the hasty execution of a second-rate draughtsman; the head type gets
the
[Illustration: PLATE LXXXV.
Fig. 141. MUSIC: RED-FIGURED NECKED AMPHORA.]
[Illustration: PLATE LXXXVI.
Fig. 142. SLEEP AND DEATH CARRY OUT A WARRIOR TO BURIAL: WHITE-GROUND
LEKYTHOS.]
square outline, the shortened jaw, the long drawn nose, which are
characteristic of the age of Pheidias; the repetition of the epithet
_kalos_ shows that the custom of inscribing a love-name is dying out.
About contemporary is the London amphora with twisted handles (Fig. 141)
with the Muses Melusa and Terpsichore and the bard Musaios. Orpheus
among the Thracians and Terpsichore in a reverie with the harp are
purely pictures of lyric feeling.
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