ATHENIAN ARCHITECTURE. 37

The vases of the Greeks of the most remote antiquity were perhaps without white grounds, as
those found in the Grecian colonies in Sicily and Magna Graecia are all of that description, from
which it might be supposed that style only at first pervaded in Greece, and being carried from
thence to its colonies, was adhered to by them without afterwards permitting the innovation of
the new variety, those with grounds of white formed on red pottery. From the vase purchased
at Corinth by Mr. Dodwell being of a box-wood colour, the natural tint perhaps of the pottery,
the vases of the Greeks with a composition of white over them, at first perhaps imitative of that
tint, have been called Corinthian; the other description being attendant on the one particular
style of art used throughout Sicily might be called, merely to distinguish them, Dorian.

Each of these species appear to have two very perceptible varieties. In the latter the subjects
represented are of the natural red colour of the pottery; and the ground or space around them is
black, as the Athenian bird and olive branches referred to in the Plate, the finest Athenian speci-
mens of which are the vase on which Jupiter is represented, in the possession of the Rev. W.Wood,
and that with Ceres and Bacchus, in Sir Sandford Graham's collection. But in the most ancient
species of this description the process is reversed, and the subjects themselves are usually in black
and deep purple red, and the space surrounding them is the natural colour of the pottery. Perhaps
this was the style of vases that began to be first used in the heroic ages, when the Cyclopian or
Tuscan architecture prevailed, the most interesting specimen of which is the one now known
throughout Europe found at Athens by Mr. Burgon, and deposited in his beautiful collection of
Athenian vases, with a most ancient representation of Minerva, and a charioteer driving a biga.
Several small Athenian vases I have, with a foot race and chariot races : the ground being the red
colour of the pottery, and the subjects represented mostly in black: and on one other small vase
of the same species, the subject represented seems to be the narrative related by Plutarch, of the
mule dismissed on account of age following the others drawing the materials for the Parthenon, as
mules appear drawing a Doric capital in a car, and one running with them.

The Corinthian vases may perhaps also be sufficiently classed in two varieties : the most ancient
the shoulder and neck part of the vase is not covered with the white composition as the body,
but is of the red colour of the pottery, with the cup or lip only at the top, and the outer side of the
handle black. On the neck of these is more usually a star, yet sometimes that of a honeysuckle,
either of which are in black only on the red ground. The second and most beautiful of this
species are with a covering of white over the upper part or shoulder, as well as round the body of
the vase, and the narrow part of the neck with entire handle, and cup or lip japaned with black ;
on the neck of these a honeysuckle of an especial character, preserved to this species of vase, is
painted in black and vermillion of the same design, in all varying slightly in form as they rise
more or less upwards on the neck.

The first small vase on the Plate belongs to the earliest species, the neek being the red colour
of the pottery; it has the usual star ornament painted in black, which is drawn to a larger scale in
the centre under the elevations of the vases. The body is a jet black, appearing to be a glaze,
and but of the thinnest consistency, would resemble the black japan so much used by the
Chinese.