Waldstein, Charles: The Argive Heraeum (Band 1): General introduction, geology, architecture marble statuary and inscriptions (Boston [u.a.], 1902)

DIPYLON VASES

53

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red

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Fig. 26. — Argive (Photo-Corinthian)

Vase, Linear style.

From the Heraeum.

The greatest confusion has heen caused by the misnomer " Geometric," ' applied to
the so-called Dipylon vases. As we shall see, the geometric feeling of ornamentation
prevails in the earliest times, and is never lost in any
period within the history of all these early vases.
The characteristic difference in the application of
this principle in the so-called Dipylon vase is not
so much in the linear, meaningless decoration, as
contrasted with the rendering of life and nature, as
in the redundancy of geometrical ornament over
the whole vase, which is thus subdivided by these
designs into " compartments " that hold a mathemat-
ical relation to one another ; and in the fact that
these crowded elements of decoration are repeated,
if not always with identity, at least with the greatest
similarity of character. It has thus been justly re-
marked that this style of ornamentation on painted
vases seems to have been borrowed from some other
form of manufacture in which the design, owing to
the mechanical system of its production, necessarily
leads to this redundancy, and to this repetition. This
is to be found chiefly in the art of weaving patterns
or of basket-work, and it is highly probable that

these crafts had their influence upon the decorative feeling of the Dipylon vase-painter.
The important point upon which I wish to insist is that the geometric feeling as
expressed in regular and symmetrical lines, whether straight or curved, irrespective of any
imitation of objects in nature or of any meaning beyond the direct appeal to the aesthetic
sense of vision as such, was always present as a prominent element in the decoration of
Mycenaean vases, and that at the earlier stages it was predominant, because these earlier
stages were the direct and natural development of the same principle in primitive art.
Among the various groups into which Mycenaean vases have been divided,
there is not one in which we could not find vases the decoration of which
consists solely of linear or geometrical ornaments. This is especially the
case with the Mycenaean vases of smaller size, — in fact, it is generally
only in the larger and finer specimens that the more elaborate, natural-
istic ornament is introduced. And where this naturalistic ornament is
present, we must not forget that it is set off by a series of lines drawn
round the vase, the most important part of its general ornament, which
Augive is so much like the Argive-Linear, hitherto called Proto-Corinthian deco-
(Peoto-Corinthi- ra^on that when we merely find fragments of Mycenaean vases contain-

an) Vase later . J ° J

STyXE. ing these linear ornaments, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to

From tiie Heraeum. decide whether they belong to a vase of the naturalistic Mycenaean class
or to the Argive-Linear class. This is still more difficult, if not impos-
sible, in the case of small vases, where we merely have a shape that has been assigned
to them as distinctly Mycenaean, but which does not seem to me to justify us in classing
them as Mycenaean instead of our advanced Argive-Linear (Proto-Corinthian).

1 I sincerely hope that the term " Dipylon," which " Mycenaean," will be henceforth used instead of " Geo-
in its connotation of locality corresponds to the term metric."

Fig. 27

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