Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)Buschor, Ernst
History
Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)
Buschor, Ernst
Vase-painting, Greek
In Crete Phoenician metal objects have been found, which were imported
during the Geometric period, and the Cretan Geometric pottery soon takes
up motives of decoration borrowed from the Oriental or Orientalizing
metal industry. The row of ‘S’s,’ which plays a part in Geometric
bronzes, appears as we have seen on the Kavusi jug (p. 27). Its climax
is the cable pattern (_guilloche_), which is obviously borrowed from
Phoenician metal vessels (Fig. 26). The tongue pattern (Figs. 25-27)
which surrounds the lower part and the shoulder of the vases, like the
rays similarly used (Figs. 31-35), goes back ultimately to Egyptian
plant calyces. The connection with bronze patterns is fully proved by
the dots often placed on the ornaments, by the technique of adding white
on black painted vases (Fig. 29)
[Illustration: PLATE XIV.
Fig. 27. CRETAN MINIATURE JUG.
Fig. 28. THE FLIGHT FROM THE CAVE OF POLYPHEMUS, FROM A JUG FROM
ÆGINA.]
which aims at a metallic effect, and by the change of the vase shapes.
These often get a quite non-ceramic appearance (Fig. 25), and in their
rounding and contouring, especially by the emphasis on the foot (Figs.
25 and 27), they are in contrast with the Geometric forms. The Praisos
jug (Fig. 26) is obviously under Cypriot influence, as is the delicate
Berlin jug (Fig. 27), in which a previously described class (p. 27)
reaches its high water mark. The Praisos pitcher (Fig. 25) to the
Orientalizing patterns enumerated already adds the hook spirals, which
are characteristic of the 7th century, and the Berlin jug adds also the
volute and the palmette. The plastic head which crowns this little
bottle, and is entirely inspired by the Egypto-Phoenician ideas of form,
inaugurates a new era in the representation of man. We are now in the
time when Greek sculpture was born, in that notable period when Greek
art under the influence of Oriental art took to the chisel, to enter on
a century of development which ended in giving shape to the loftiest and
most delicate creations that can move the spirit of man. It is
noteworthy that Greek tradition embodied the beginnings of this
development in a Cretan, Daedalus, and to a kinsman of this ancestor of
all Greek sculptors it traced back the invention of the great art of
painting, without the influence of which we cannot conceive of
vase-paintings henceforward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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