The technique presents several entirely new features, such as the use of a slip as a basis for the colours; the polished, brilliant, and even surface; and above all the lustrous black varnish, which was the peculiar pride of Greek potters, and is now a lost art. The comparative monotony of the colouring is probably due to a purely technical reason, namely, the difficulty of resisting the action of fire; otherwise such an artistic people would doubtless have exhibited the same richness of colouring in their pottery that we find in their frescoes. The Mycenaean pottery is deservedly held in high estimation for its picturesque and naturalistic style, which in its reproduction of animal and vegetable forms often rivals Japanese art. Although its scope is remarkably wide, yet there is a strong preference for marine subjects—the cuttle-fish, the murex shell, the nautilus, and various kinds of seaweed or such plants as the _Vallisneria spiralis_ (Chapter XVI.). In Fig. 82 two good examples in the British Museum are illustrated—one from Egypt, the other from Kalymnos.[920] Altogether there is an originality and poetry of ideas such as never appears again in Greek art; but that is not a peculiar possession of the potters, as the metal-work, gem-engraving, and fresco-paintings testify—above all, such masterpieces as the Vaphio gold cups, or some of the wall-paintings recently discovered in Crete. ------------------------------------------------------ PLATE XV [Illustration: MYCENAEAN POTTERY (BRITISH MUSEUM). ] _To face page 273._ ------------------------------------ Religious ideas, on the other hand, are strangely conspicuous by their absence. Mycenaean mythology is so far almost nonexistent in the art; and although attempts have at times been made to detect traces of early cults, as in the figures of men dressed as animals,[921] or the representations of the double axe,[922] they have not as yet met with universal acceptance. More improbable is the curious idea recently mooted,[923] that the subjects of the vase-paintings indicate an acquaintance with such theories as those of biological evolution. [Illustration: FIG. 82. MYCENAEAN VASES WITH MARINE SUBJECTS (BRIT. MUS.).]