DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.8176#0012
6
dependent on the quality of their black glaze and ivory white, and the odd richness of the mosaic entanglement of
those colours with the red of the clay. When turned into dead black upon white, the mysterious grotesque reveals too
much the dummy character of its figures and a certain smallness in the treatment, for an amphora is seldom decorated
as a whole, but is a collection of bands of ornament.
It is from the period of the red-figured vases that we have chosen most of the examples, and it is explained
in the historical note that follows how this change of technique coincides with an advance in drawing, and with the
choice of the cylix for decoration, the most graceful and simple of the vase forms. The largeness and wholeness of
these cylix designs will be at once appreciated from their handsomer look on the page. There was something, perhaps,
in the new technique itself that helped this change, for the designer who puts a figure into a space will be apt to do
it more meagrely when he makes it out positively in black than he who, as it were, folds and draws in the space
towards his figure. Instead of being something thrown in and lost in a vaguely felt space, the figure is more closely
tied up with the parts it does not fill ; these are bargained for in a conscious give and take, and become musical
pauses instead of blank and unconsidered silence. The circle or fan form becomes an element in the design instead of
a negative boundary. Along with this change from the cramp of the old style there was the more natural allotment
of the two colours, for the existing red of the pot stood better for flesh than the rather monstrous black.
With this new technique the painter approached more closely to the beauties of natural form. He kept his
representation within clear limits ; his figures are in one plane, and with few exceptions retain that sideways projection of the
head and limbs that is most interesting as arabesque and most telling for action and gesture. But his feeling for the proportions
and graces of the human form occasionally presses the actual beauty very nearly, and in other cases more loosely suggests it.
He formed for himself, like designers of other decorative periods, a sort of abstract or mannikin of a human figure, which he
could twist about freely, and which yet was near enough the fact to be enlivened with an observed action or felicity of
expression. Where his knowledge left off, his taste and invention remained. He followed the foot or hand up to a certain point,
but when it baffled him or tried his patience, or went beyond what he conceived the necessities of imitation to demand, he
turned it into something of a pretty pattern. The locked hands of the Peleus and Thetis are an almost comic simplification,
but the fingers and toes of other figures are as definitely a fringe pattern, made out of fingers and toes ; only the pattern
is moulded closer to the fact. The eye, again, is frankly compromised with, and the ear is given up. The look of the faces
depends rather on the placing of the features than on their natural delineation. Perhaps the furthest reach of natural beauty is
in the Aphrodite of the frontispiece, one of the examples we give of yet another technique, the Polychromatic. Even in the
beautiful Amphitrite design of Euphronios there is an ugly mannerism in the drawing of the under lip ; in this face not only
the placing of the features is fine, but with the same simplicity of means the forms of the features are more closely rendered,
and the flow of line in the profile marks a high accomplishment in drawing.
But it is not for closeness of life likeness in drawing that one praises these designs. In that feature they have, of
course, been far surpassed. It is rather for a taste in life, whereby a minimum of statement carries a maximum of reference to
the elements of dignity and grace, and for that lively ease in the performance that comes of a matter well in hand, thoroughly
subdued and compactly fitted to the chosen means of execution. The painter does not labour his ignorance, or parade an
ennui; there is a clean zest in the traits of fact that he relates, and at the limit of his knowledge he does not fumble or
grope with undigested nature, but rests upon his feeling for beauty. When a contour is doubtful he lets the general sense of
the design decide which way it is to go, and the action of his figure is as much controlled and determined by the circle that
it fills^as by the business that occupies it. It is but a figurante in the general dance, though the dance be a pantomime
that tells a tale. The general motion of the dance overbears the particular imitations of the pantomime. This
truth to harmony is what makes decoration, and will always save the most naif or abbreviated drawing, if it be
complete in its own sense, making it more full and persuasive to the imagination than some exact document of muscles
awkwardly placed upon a page. This secret of beauty in those pots is nowhere more clearly betrayed than in the lines of
drapery, so strict and yet so flowing, called to express the form of a limb, and yet called to express it as a fact is told in a song.
The line sings the story, and does not merely tell it. The limb below is something, but the other lines of the piece and the
boundary line are more—the order of fact yields to an order of harmony.
Only a few, perhaps, of the designs here can properly be styled masterpieces. The young horseman of Euphronios is a
failure compared with that ascribed to Onesimos. The Penelope and Telemachus looks like a poor copy of a well-conceived
design, and a few others have some interesting features rather than complete beauty. For treatment of the more difficult
side of a cylix perhaps the Dance of Maenads, by Hieron, must bear the palm, and it surely is among the most beautiful
designs in the world.
dependent on the quality of their black glaze and ivory white, and the odd richness of the mosaic entanglement of
those colours with the red of the clay. When turned into dead black upon white, the mysterious grotesque reveals too
much the dummy character of its figures and a certain smallness in the treatment, for an amphora is seldom decorated
as a whole, but is a collection of bands of ornament.
It is from the period of the red-figured vases that we have chosen most of the examples, and it is explained
in the historical note that follows how this change of technique coincides with an advance in drawing, and with the
choice of the cylix for decoration, the most graceful and simple of the vase forms. The largeness and wholeness of
these cylix designs will be at once appreciated from their handsomer look on the page. There was something, perhaps,
in the new technique itself that helped this change, for the designer who puts a figure into a space will be apt to do
it more meagrely when he makes it out positively in black than he who, as it were, folds and draws in the space
towards his figure. Instead of being something thrown in and lost in a vaguely felt space, the figure is more closely
tied up with the parts it does not fill ; these are bargained for in a conscious give and take, and become musical
pauses instead of blank and unconsidered silence. The circle or fan form becomes an element in the design instead of
a negative boundary. Along with this change from the cramp of the old style there was the more natural allotment
of the two colours, for the existing red of the pot stood better for flesh than the rather monstrous black.
With this new technique the painter approached more closely to the beauties of natural form. He kept his
representation within clear limits ; his figures are in one plane, and with few exceptions retain that sideways projection of the
head and limbs that is most interesting as arabesque and most telling for action and gesture. But his feeling for the proportions
and graces of the human form occasionally presses the actual beauty very nearly, and in other cases more loosely suggests it.
He formed for himself, like designers of other decorative periods, a sort of abstract or mannikin of a human figure, which he
could twist about freely, and which yet was near enough the fact to be enlivened with an observed action or felicity of
expression. Where his knowledge left off, his taste and invention remained. He followed the foot or hand up to a certain point,
but when it baffled him or tried his patience, or went beyond what he conceived the necessities of imitation to demand, he
turned it into something of a pretty pattern. The locked hands of the Peleus and Thetis are an almost comic simplification,
but the fingers and toes of other figures are as definitely a fringe pattern, made out of fingers and toes ; only the pattern
is moulded closer to the fact. The eye, again, is frankly compromised with, and the ear is given up. The look of the faces
depends rather on the placing of the features than on their natural delineation. Perhaps the furthest reach of natural beauty is
in the Aphrodite of the frontispiece, one of the examples we give of yet another technique, the Polychromatic. Even in the
beautiful Amphitrite design of Euphronios there is an ugly mannerism in the drawing of the under lip ; in this face not only
the placing of the features is fine, but with the same simplicity of means the forms of the features are more closely rendered,
and the flow of line in the profile marks a high accomplishment in drawing.
But it is not for closeness of life likeness in drawing that one praises these designs. In that feature they have, of
course, been far surpassed. It is rather for a taste in life, whereby a minimum of statement carries a maximum of reference to
the elements of dignity and grace, and for that lively ease in the performance that comes of a matter well in hand, thoroughly
subdued and compactly fitted to the chosen means of execution. The painter does not labour his ignorance, or parade an
ennui; there is a clean zest in the traits of fact that he relates, and at the limit of his knowledge he does not fumble or
grope with undigested nature, but rests upon his feeling for beauty. When a contour is doubtful he lets the general sense of
the design decide which way it is to go, and the action of his figure is as much controlled and determined by the circle that
it fills^as by the business that occupies it. It is but a figurante in the general dance, though the dance be a pantomime
that tells a tale. The general motion of the dance overbears the particular imitations of the pantomime. This
truth to harmony is what makes decoration, and will always save the most naif or abbreviated drawing, if it be
complete in its own sense, making it more full and persuasive to the imagination than some exact document of muscles
awkwardly placed upon a page. This secret of beauty in those pots is nowhere more clearly betrayed than in the lines of
drapery, so strict and yet so flowing, called to express the form of a limb, and yet called to express it as a fact is told in a song.
The line sings the story, and does not merely tell it. The limb below is something, but the other lines of the piece and the
boundary line are more—the order of fact yields to an order of harmony.
Only a few, perhaps, of the designs here can properly be styled masterpieces. The young horseman of Euphronios is a
failure compared with that ascribed to Onesimos. The Penelope and Telemachus looks like a poor copy of a well-conceived
design, and a few others have some interesting features rather than complete beauty. For treatment of the more difficult
side of a cylix perhaps the Dance of Maenads, by Hieron, must bear the palm, and it surely is among the most beautiful
designs in the world.