DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0207
XII
GREEK PAINTING
187
to restore the Delphic paintings of Polygnotus made before
appeal was made to the testimony of vases.1 We are now for-
tunately able to trace with confidence the influence of Polygno-
tus on some of the vases of the fifth century; and a comparison
of these with the descriptions of Pausanias may be said to have
given us a fairly satisfactory notion of the drawing and group-
ing, though not of the colouring, of the great Thasian master.
In particular we can trace what kind of perspective he intro-
duced into art, and what ways he had of telling a story or
describing a situation. That is to say, Ave can recover his
grammar, if not his poetry.
The Polygnotan perspective, simple and almost childish as
it seems to us, really marks the parting of the ways between
painting and relief, which had hitherto been frequently com-
bined so as to be almost confused. Polygnotus attacked the
problem of representing different sets of people, not in the same
plane, but some farther off than others. He did not depict the
farther figures on a smaller scale, nor did he (what indeed we
could scarcely expect of an early artist working in the bright
light of Greece) allow for the effect of atmosphere in making
them less clearly visible. But two things he did : first, he placed
the more distant figures higher up in the field of the painting,
and second, he represented the lines of the irregular hills of
the background, hills almost invariable in a Greek landscape,
as passing up and down through the painting, and sometimes
concealing parts of the farther figures. Professor Robert has
skilfully reconstructed on such principles the Iliupersis and the
Nekuia of Polygnotus.2 A few vases of the middle of the fifth
century seem arranged on exactly the same plan. One of these,
representing the slaying by Apollo and Artemis of the children
of Niobe,3 on one side, and on the other the Argonautic heroes
1 See the Vienna Vorlegeblatler for 1888, Pis. X.-XII.
2 Published at Halle, 1892, 93. The schemes are repeated in Frazer's Pausa-
nias, Vol. V., pp. 360, 372.
3 Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. X., p. 118.
GREEK PAINTING
187
to restore the Delphic paintings of Polygnotus made before
appeal was made to the testimony of vases.1 We are now for-
tunately able to trace with confidence the influence of Polygno-
tus on some of the vases of the fifth century; and a comparison
of these with the descriptions of Pausanias may be said to have
given us a fairly satisfactory notion of the drawing and group-
ing, though not of the colouring, of the great Thasian master.
In particular we can trace what kind of perspective he intro-
duced into art, and what ways he had of telling a story or
describing a situation. That is to say, Ave can recover his
grammar, if not his poetry.
The Polygnotan perspective, simple and almost childish as
it seems to us, really marks the parting of the ways between
painting and relief, which had hitherto been frequently com-
bined so as to be almost confused. Polygnotus attacked the
problem of representing different sets of people, not in the same
plane, but some farther off than others. He did not depict the
farther figures on a smaller scale, nor did he (what indeed we
could scarcely expect of an early artist working in the bright
light of Greece) allow for the effect of atmosphere in making
them less clearly visible. But two things he did : first, he placed
the more distant figures higher up in the field of the painting,
and second, he represented the lines of the irregular hills of
the background, hills almost invariable in a Greek landscape,
as passing up and down through the painting, and sometimes
concealing parts of the farther figures. Professor Robert has
skilfully reconstructed on such principles the Iliupersis and the
Nekuia of Polygnotus.2 A few vases of the middle of the fifth
century seem arranged on exactly the same plan. One of these,
representing the slaying by Apollo and Artemis of the children
of Niobe,3 on one side, and on the other the Argonautic heroes
1 See the Vienna Vorlegeblatler for 1888, Pis. X.-XII.
2 Published at Halle, 1892, 93. The schemes are repeated in Frazer's Pausa-
nias, Vol. V., pp. 360, 372.
3 Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. X., p. 118.