Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)Buschor, Ernst
History
Greek vase-painting (Griechische Vasenmalerei)
Buschor, Ernst
Vase-painting, Greek
at all events Corinthian elements, _e.g._ riders with birds for
space-filling in the black-figured style give this indication, though
the conservative retention of the white slip and the inconsistent
rendering of the male eye clearly distinguish it from Corinthian. It
becomes really tangible to us at the period, when exportation properly
begins, at a time which already puts a black wash under imposed white
and with the shapes takes us further along into the 6th century. The
ware for exportation, which spread far over the mainland to Naukratis
and Samos as well as to Etruria, has given us only a few big vases,
finely decorative works, which are very conservative in their adornment.
The earliest of them is a Paris ‘lebes’ with heraldically arranged
animal-frieze and a frieze of figures above it, in which pot-bellied
topers are placed between the Troilos story and a Centaur battle; two
volute kraters and two hydriae, by their shapes, cannot be much later.
Broad tongues adorn shoulder and foot, the rays are doubled, to
Geometric zig-zag and hooked bands are added upright arched friezes of
lotus and pomegranate, continuous branches, and the lotus and palmette
pattern; the animal friezes have types of their own and do not avoid the
processional order not ordinarily favoured in the West. Even the larger
vases found in actual Spartan sanctuaries are almost entirely decorative
and show little of the figure painting coming in so vigorously in other
manufactories.
A compensation for this is offered by the number of kylikes preserved,
which in the 6th century, as in East Ionia, Corinth and Athens, so also
in Sparta, gradually pass into the high-stemmed shape with offset rim
(Fig. 80). The outsides of these kylikes are adorned only in a few
earlier specimens with antithetic or processional animal friezes,
otherwise only with the simple or net-like pomegranate pattern, with
lotus leaves and rays; from the handles proceed palmettes on their
sides. The figures are entirely confined to the interior, which much
more commonly than in other manufactories, rises out of pure
ornamentation or animal decoration to free scenic representations. To be
sure this is often at the expense of the decorative effect. Most scenes
are anything but composed with a view to a round space, and the segments
under the line which marks the level of the ground, often very clumsily
filled with plant and animal ornamentation, the rosettes, filling
flowers, and birds dispersed without meaning about the scene, are always
clumsy old-fashioned compromises between representation and
space-filling. The stock of figures, with which the painter decorates
his interiors, usually more or less at random, is even in its rendering
helpless and antiquated; to make up it preserves its independence and
ease, its primitive solidity; the strong warriors, riders and hunters,
the men carousing with women, the musicians and drinkers, the girls
bathing in the river, are in subject and execution truly Spartan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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