Payne, Humfry: Necrocorinthia: a study of Corinthian art in the Archaic period (Oxford, 1931)

THE CORINTHIAN FIGURE STYLE 95

will be added to this series: a fragmentary alabastron decorated with a battle
scene in the same manner as the vases which have just been described.1

The peculiarity of these polychrome vases is that their decoration is
planned from the outset in three colours: brown (inclining either to yellow or
to grey) for flesh, with red and black for the remaining surfaces. The same
colours are found on orientalizing vases, for instance, in pi. 5, but here the
usage is different: red and yellow are simply enhancements, employed to
alleviate the monotony of the silhouette. In the polychrome vases of which we
are speaking, there is no basis of black:2 equal emphasis is laid on all the
colours that are used. The Chigi vase (no. 39) is the most perfect example of
this technique.

Fig. 29. a-b, Protocorinthian; c, Corinthian, a, from the aryballos pi. i, 8-n (enlarged);

b, from no. 39; c, from no. 482.

The origin of this complex polychrome style has often been sought in de-
scriptions of inlaid metal work such as the shields of Achilles and of Herakles,
and the inlaid dagger-blades of the late Minoan period have been quoted as
examples of the kind of models which must have inspired the painters of the
'style magnifique'. The arguments which have been brought forward to
support this view3 are obviously weakened by the absence of any contem-
porary metal work of the kind which this hypothesis requires. Metal workers
in the seventh century had two techniques for executing figurative decoration
—embossing and engraving—and the former at least was still in a very primitive
stage of development at the time of which we are speaking. Apart from the
practice of inlaying the eyes of statues, the only traces of archaic Greek inlaid
metal work appear to be some fragments found at Olympia,4 and a few odds

1 It is peculiar, however, in that the figures are
arranged, in oriental fashion, at different levels in
the field, and not in horizontal bands; compare the
bronze relief, Annali 1852 pis. H-I (Furtwangler,
Kl. Schriften i, pi. 14, 3 and 4), and Nikosthenic
cups such as Hoppin B.F. V. 182-5.

2 Either metaphorically, or literally; for the brown
or yellow is always placed directly on the clay.

3 Cf. especially Johansen, 160; Furtwangler Kleine
Schriften ii, 106; Studniczka, Schild des Herakles, 54.

4 Olympia, iv, 848, 925, quoted by Studniczka,
op. cit.