being applied with a fine brush in monochrome—black, yellow or red—following the lines of the sketch. For the drapery and other details polychrome washes were employed, laid on with a large brush. All varieties of red from rose to brown are found, also violet, yellow, blue, black and green. Hair is treated either in outline or by means of washes.
Finally, we have to deal with the class of vases (3 (b)) in which opaque pigments are laid over the surface of the shining black with which the whole vase is coated. This method is met with at three distinct periods in the history of vase-painting, separated by long distances of time.
We first find it in the earlier Cretan or Kamares ware, where it seems to have been introduced not long after the close of the Neolithic period, about 2500 B.C., and where it holds its own for about a thousand years against the contrasted method of “dark on light” painting, till it was finally ousted by the latter at the height of “Mycenaean” civilization in Crete. The colouring is very varied, orange, brown, pink and white being the principal tints employed.
The process appears again at the end of the 5th century in a small class of Attic vases, which have been regarded as a sort of transition between the black-figured and red-figured. White and orange-red are here employed, sometimes with accessory details in purple and black and incised lines, so that the technique is virtually black-figured, though the appearance of the vases is often red-figured. Lastly, it appears in southern Italy as a final effort of vase-painting to flicker into life again about the end of the 3rd century. Some of these vases were made in Campania, where the method resembles that of the Attic class just described, others in Apulia, probably at Gnathia. The latter have feeble conventional decoration in purple and white with details in yellow, confined to one side of the vases, and are also distinguished by the use of ornaments in relief. They were also occasionally made in Greece proper.
Remarkably few colours were used by the Greek vase painters, especially in the best periods. The deep purple used for accessory details was produced from iron oxide, but the red used for lines on the white lekythoi is an ochre (μίλτος, rubrica). The white also used for accessories is an earth or clay; in the slip coating of the white ground vases it assumes the consistency of pipe-clay. Yellow, where used for details on the later vases, is an ochre, and blue and green are produced from artificial compounds containing copper. A number of the colours, such as blue, rose and green, used by the polychrome painters, are obviously artificial pigments which have not been fired. When gilding was employed it was laid on over a raised ground of clay finely modelled with a small tool or brush, and was attached by varnish, not by fire.
Potters and Inscriptions.—The potters who made these vases were mostly—at least at Athens in the 6th and 5th centuries, B.C.—μἐτοικοι, or resident aliens, as their names in many cases imply. We have an Amasis (an Egyptian name), a Brygus (a Scythian), a Lydus and a Scythes. The dialect of many of the inscriptions on Attic vases seems to show foreign influence, though in other cases peculiarities may be merely due to the use of a vernacular. They formed a gild or fraternity, and in each pottery there was probably more or less division of labour, the more simple processes being the work of slaves. This seems to be implied in the vase-paintings representing the interior of potteries. Others again “specialized” in different shapes, and were known as χυτροπλάθοι, ληκυθοποιοί, and so on.
Over a hundred names of artists are known, found on some five hundred vases. They go back to about 700 B.C., the earliest names being found on Corinthian and Boeotian vases; but the majority of the signatures are found on Attic black- and red-figured wares. Some, such as Andocides, made vases in which the two methods are combined. The best known is Nicosthenes, whose signature occurs eighty times. The ordinary forms of signature are four—(1) ὁ δεῖνα ἐποίησεν; (2) ὁ δεῖνα ἔγραψεν; (3) ὁ δεῖνα ἔγραψε καὶ ἐποίησεν; (4) Α ἔγραψε. Β ἐποίησεν. Where ἐποίησε alone occurs (as in a signature of Euxitheus), it probably refers to the master of the pottery who designed the vase and superintended its production; in other cases the share of the actual artist is clearly indicated. Some artists, such as Duris and Makron, sign ἔγραψε alone; in all cases, the form of signature affords us a useful guide to their style.
Space forbids the discussion of other inscriptions found on vases, which include those descriptive of subjects or persons, ejaculations uttered by the figures, convivial exclamations, or the καλός names discussed below; all these are painted on the designs themselves. There is also another class of graffiti inscriptions, which includes those incised by the owners with their names and memoranda scratched under the foot, probably made by the potter or his workmen relating to the number of vases in a batch or “set” and their price.
Vitreous and Lead-glazed Wares.—In Greek tombs a class of pottery is often found which approximates, more in appearance to porcelain, but, though often spoken of by that name, it is not porcelain at all, but is analogous to the Egyptian glazed faience, of which it is in point of fact an imitation. It is distinguished by the white gritty material of which it is made, largely composed of sand, and forming what is sometimes known as “frit” from its semi-vitreous consistency. The surface is covered with a glaze, usually of a pale blue or cream colour, but other colours such as a manganese-purple or brown are sometimes found. Some of the earliest examples of this ware have been found in Mycenaean tombs at Enkomi in Cyprus, in the form of vases moulded in the shape of human or animal heads. These exhibit a remarkably advanced skill in modelling, and are more like Greek work of the 6th century B.C. Apart from the technique they have nothing in common with the Egyptian importations so often found in Mycenaean tombs.
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| Fig. 19.—Enamelled pottery from tombs in Rhodes, made under Egyptian influence. |
In a subsequent period (8th–7th century B.C.) Egyptian objects in faience became a common import into Greek cities, such as those of Rhodes, and to a less degree in Sardinia and southern Italy, through the commercial medium of the Phoenicians. Flasks of faience occur in the Polledrara tomb at Vulci (610–600 B.C.) and similar vases with a pale green glaze at Tharros in Sardinia in tombs of the same date. In Rhodes, small flasks and jars are found ornamented with friezes of men and animals in relief, or imitating in colour and design the glass vessels of the Phoenicians. It also seems probable that the Greeks of Rhodes and other centres attempted the imitation of this ware (see fig. 19), for we find faience aryballi or globular oil-flasks modelled in the form of helmeted heads or animals, which are purely Greek in style.
In the Hellenistic period the fashion was revived at Alexandria, and under the Ptolemies large jugs of blue-enamelled faience with figures in relief and bearing the names of reigning sovereigns were made and exported to the Cyrenaica and to southern Italy. Two of these are in the British Museum (Egyptian department). The same collection includes a very beautiful glazed vase in the form of Eros riding on a duck, found in a tomb at Tanagra, but undoubtedly of Alexandrine make, and a head of a Ptolemaic queen, with a surface of bright blue glaze.
Subsequently in the 1st century B.C., this so-called porcelain ware was replaced by a variety of ware characterized by a brilliantly coloured glaze coating, in which the presence of lead is often indicated. This ware was principally made at three centres; at Tarsus in Asia Minor, at Alexandria and at Lezoux in central Gaul. But it was probably also made in western Asia Minor and in Italy. It is not confined to vases, being also employed for lamps and small figures; the vases are usually of small size, in shapes imitated from metal (Plate II., fig. 59). The colour of the glaze varies from a deep green to bright yellow, and the inside of a vessel is often of a different tint from the exterior. Many of these vases are decorated with figures or designs in relief, others are quite plain. The colours of these glazes are of course due to the addition of oxide of copper and oxide of iron to a lead glaze, and they are strictly analogous to the green and yellow glazes of medieval Europe.[1]
Historical Account of Greek Vase-painting.—It has been indicated in the section dealing with technical processes that Greek vases may be classified under four headings according to the character of the decoration, and this classification may with a slight modification be adopted as a chronological one, the history of the art falling under four main heads, under which it will be convenient to describe its development from the earliest specimens of painted pottery down to the period when it was finally replaced by other methods of decoration.
These four classes and their main characteristics may be summarized as follows:—
I. Vases of the Primitive Period from about 2500 or 2000 to 600 B.C., including both the Cretan-Mycenaean epoch and the early ages of historical Greece. In the former the pottery is either decorated in polychrome on a shining black ground or conversely in shining black on a buff ground; in the latter, the decoration is in brown or black (usually dull, not shiny) on an unglazed ground varying from white to pale red. In the former again the decoration is marked by its naturalistic treatment of plant and animal forms; in the latter the ornaments are chiefly linear, floral or figures of animals; human figures and mythological scenes being very rare.
II. Black-figured Vases from about 600–500 B.C.; figures painted in shining black on a glossy ground varying from cream colour to bright orange red, with engraved lines and white and purple for details; subjects mainly from mythology and legend.
III. Red-figured Vases, from 520 to 400 B.C.; figures drawn in outline on red clay and the background wholly filled in with shining black, inner details indicated by painted lines or dashes of purple and white, scenes from daily life or mythology. With these are included the vases with polychrome figures on white ground. In these, which are exclusively made at Athens, the perfection of vase-painting is reached between 480 and 450 B.C.
IV. Vases of the Decadence, from 400 to 200 B.C.; mostly from southern Italy, technique as in Class III., but the drawing is free
- ↑ On this subject see in particular Mazard, De la connaissance par les anciens des glaçures plombifères, a scientific and valuable monograph (1879); also Rayet and Collignon, Hist. de la céramique grecque, p. 365 (or B.M. Cat. of Roman Pottery, Introduction).
