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also occur, such as winged and snake-legged monsters. figures and mythological subjects are comparatively rare.

Human

The subjects are usually painted in black and purple on a yellow ground. It will be observed that the outlines and details are emphasized or defined, with incised lines drawn in the coloured varnish and the surface of the clay with a sharp point. This method is fully developed in the Corinthian style. It afterwards became of great importance throughout the period of the black-figure vases, and did not cease to be used until after the introduction of the red-figure style (Third Vase Room).

Cases 12-15. Transitional vases painted in the style called Later Corinthian. We have seen that the Corinthian vases are marked by a preference for animals, wild or fabulous, with flowers, rosettes, etc., filling all vacant spaces. Here in the Later Corinthian style, the rosettes and other accessories tend to disappear, and definite figure-subjects are introduced, consisting principally of scenes of combat, with occasional use of mythological subjects.

Cases 16-17 contain Chalcidian and early Attic fabrics of a similar style. The Chalcidian group, to which B 75, 76 belong, is a small class, which is assigned to Chalcis (in Euboea), on account of the forms of the letters used in the inscriptions, but has not as yet been found on that site. It is also marked by the peculiar borders of lotus buds and flowers, and by the forms of the handles, neck, and foot, which are those of metal work, rather than of pottery.

[We cross to the opposite side of the room, and begin next the door to the First Vase Room.]

Case L (shade). Smaller vases, imitating the forms of objects, such as seated figures, heads, busts, birds, etc. These examples were for the most part found in Rhodes, but with them are grouped similar vases found elsewhere.

Four small lekythi at the end next to the gangway belong to the class of Proto-Corinthian' vases described above.

The finest of these is a lekythos of great delicacy and beauty, presented by the late Malcolm Macmillan. The upper part of the vase is in the form of a lion's head, with open mouth. At the junction of the handle with the head is a minute Gorgon's mask. Round the body of the vase are three friezes: (1) Eighteen spearmen in combat, each with a device upon his shield; (2) Race of six horses; (3) Man and dogs hunting a hare. This lekythos is unrivalled for the extraordinary minuteness of its decoration.

Case L and Wall-cases 62-64. Vases from Cameiros in Rhodes, including jugs (oinochoae), plates (pinakes), and cups (kylikes) (fig. 103). The decoration consists partly of bands of animals and interspersed ornaments, such as those already described, and partly of mythological subjects. Among the most interesting

are:

(1.) Plate, with a Gorgon of Asiatic form. She has the pro

truding tusks and tongue of the Greek Gorgon, but holds a swan in each hand, and these do not occur in the normal Greek type.

(2.) Combat of Hector and Menelaos over the body of the fallen Euphorbos (fig. 104). The three figures are identified by inscriptions, which are assigned to the beginning of the sixth century B.C. The form of the A is that of the Argive alphabet, but this alphabet is thought to have been used in early times in Rhodes; it is also possible that the potter copied an Argive metal relief and with the design the inscriptions in Argive letters. As regards the subject, the scene on the vase only partially corresponds with the Homeric account (Il. xvii. 59, etc.), in which Menelaos strips Euphorbos of his armour and then retreats on the approach of Hector. Such variations as this show how little the early artists were guided by the Homeric text in the form in which we know it.

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Cases 60-61. Vases of a style sometimes called 'Fikellura,' after the modern name of one of the cemeteries of Cameiros in Rhodes, at which they have principally been found. Some vases of this class have been found at Daphnae in Egypt, and they have shown themselves to be abundant in Samos.

The characteristic decoration consists of large figures of birds and animals, with smaller ornaments (such as rosettes, etc.) sown about the field, and more particularly of large volutes under the handles, and a peculiar system of bands of crescents, closely consecutive.

Cases 56-59 contain fragments of pottery, obtained by excavations at Naucratis, and belonging for the most part to the second half of the sixth century B.C.

The pottery of Naucratis was found mostly in heaps of potsherds, consisting of the fragments of vases dedicated in the temples, and afterwards broken (to prevent desecration) and buried. Most of the fragments have dedicatory inscriptions incised upon them, such

ας Σώστρατός μ' ἀνέθηκεν τῇ 'φροδίτη (Sostratos dedicated me to Aphrodite') on the large bowl in Case 58.

As might be expected at a trading centre like Naucratis, the pottery found is of many kinds. The wares especially characteristic of the place are a group of polychrome vases, painted on a creamy white ground. In the method in which parts of the figures, especially the heads, are drawn in outline only on the white

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ground, there is much in common between the wares of Naucratis and those of Rhodes, described above, and a common place of manufacture has been suggested for both groups. In some of the fragments from Naucratis there is an advance upon the simple method of drawing the subject in outline. Its inner surface is

carefully painted with the natural colour of the flesh, drapery, etc. (a method also attempted in the Rhodian plate of Menelaos, Hector and Euphorbos), and there is thus a nearer approach in respect of

P

colour to pictorial effect than is obtained by the conventions of the black-figure and red-figure styles. The result is an anticipation of the methods of the white Athenian vases (see below, p. 231).

Cases 53 (above) and 54-55. Vases and fragments excavated at Daphnae in Lower Egypt by Mr. Flinders Petrie. Daphnae was a frontier station on the road to Egypt from Syria. Its pottery indicates that it was occupied by a Greek population, perhaps identical with certain mercenaries from Asia Minor, whom we know to have occupied frontier camps in the beginning of the sixth century B.C. (Herod. ii., 154).

The tall narrow

These vases reflect their origin in their style. form and parts of the decoration are Egyptian. On the other hand we have fully developed mythological subjects, such as on B 105. On the obverse, Bellerophon mounted on Pegasus; on the reverse, the Chimaera; the painting is like that on the painted sarcophagi from Asia Minor. Compare B 116. 19 2, figures of mounted Amazons, with the fragments of a painted sarcophagus, in the First Vase Room, Case 63.

Cases 52-53. Vases with figures painted in black and purple, on a cream-coloured ground or slip, in an archaic manner.

One group of these vases (in the second and third shelves) is commonly known as 'Cyrenaic,' a name applied to it because in two instances (one a vase in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, with a scene of silphium-weighing, and the other here, no. B 4) the subjects appear to be connected with Cyrenè. In the vase B 4 the subject is a standing figure of a nymph Cyrenè (lost from the middle of the thighs upwards). She holds in her hands a branch of silphium (a plant which formed the principal source of wealth of Cyrene) and a branch of pomegranate, or possibly a branch from the garden of the Hesperides, which was placed at Cyrenè. The winged and flying figures are Boreads and Harpies. It should, however, be noted that this theory of the origin of the ware has not yet been verified by excavations at Cyrenè. The vase described above, and several fragments, were found at Naucratis, where the method of polychrome painting on a white ground was much practised. The recent excavations, however, of the British School at Athens, on the site of Sparta, have yielded complete series of this ware, so that it is probable that it is of Spartan, or at any rate of Laconian origin. This does not exclude the possibility that it may have been developed afterwards at Cyrenè.

In Case 52 the vase B 59 (fig. 105) is an example of a class of vases found at Caere (Cervetri) in Etruria, but of uncertain origin -probably from Asia Minor. It is marked by the free use of red as a ground colour, and by the decoration.

INTRODUCTION TO THE BLACK-FIGURE VASES.

We turn to the principal contents of the Second Vase Room, namely, the Attic black-figure wares.

The general character of the Attic black-figure vases may be described as follows: Upon a fine smooth clay, which the Athenian potters learnt to make of a rich orange-red colour, the figures are drawn, with a dense, lustrous varnish varying in colour from black to olive-green where the firing has been insufficient, or to reddish brown where the varnish has been too thin. The internal details of the figures are drawn through the varnish with a sharp point, often handled with minute precision. In order to obtain relief from the conventional treatment of all the subject in black, all the visible flesh of the female figures was afterwards painted in white (which might again be incised) and fired at a lower heat. White was also employed for grey hair, linen garments, white horses, pieces of bright

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metal and other suitable accessories. Purple was used, like the white, for accessories, but was employed in a conventional manner, to distinguish one mass from another, without much reference to the natural colour of the objects.

By such methods the artists of the black-figure pottery were able to attain a considerable height of artistic achievement. They tell their story with vivacity and directness, and with a remarkable economy of all accessories subordinate to the principal action. On the other hand much of the drawing is strictly conventional, and the whole system of figures in silhouette involves an element of grotesqueness which necessarily limits what the artists can accomplish.

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