The new invention unites the enhanced freedom of movement of the draughtsman with a decorative effect which is not inferior to that of the old style. The warm red inner surface of the figures, which the painter can animate by the brilliant sweeping ‘relief lines,’ splendidly contrasts with the wonderful black lustre of the ground. The new style too is a silhouette style, and uses the ornamental effect of the figures. But it contains quite different possibilities, and of itself moves away from the types of the old style and towards an individual treatment of the figures. The contrast between the black silhouette of the man and the white-filled figure of the woman falls away, also the circular shape of the man’s eye connected with the incised style, the gay dresses, and much besides. The red-figured style enters into the characteristic working out of the human body and its parts, the study of drapery folds and the rendering of movement in a living way. But growing naturalism is in true Greek fashion contemporaneous with adherence to types; formulæ once invented are retained and repeated by different masters, until new discoveries by bolder spirits outdo them and put them in the shade. In the archaic red-figured style this vigorous struggle between formula and bold observation of nature offers an exciting spectacle. Step by step the ground is won from the archaic style, till after a struggle of about fifty years, about the time of the Persian wars, a free rendering of nature is attained, which then lays the foundation for the formation of a new and higher series of types, for the style of Polygnotos and Phidias. This period may be regarded as the culminating point of vase-painting altogether, if emphasis is laid on the intensity of the line, and on the intimate relation between artist and technique. In it artistic craft had its greatest triumphs and created the most perfect synthesis between ornamental types and delightful naturalism. Potters and painters were never again so conscious of their performances as in this period, never again felt themselves so much as rival individualities. Certainly the old black-figured masters, Timonidas, Klitias, Exekias and Amasis, cannot be denied personal expression. But the red-figured conquerors of nature, each of whom in his own way breaks through the old system of type, produce a far more differentiated effect. It is also a result of the fresh current, which now enters vase-painting, that we can more than ever follow the development of these individualities. The signatures, which are preserved in such number from no other period, give an insight, not merely into the manifold production, but also into the growth of personalities and their struggle for ever new possibilities.