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 ARCHAEOLOGY

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which appear on it, belong to the wave of Ionian influence. Although it involves a departure from strict chronological order, it will be well here to follow the course of development in pottery at Athens until the

in 564 B.c. We engrave (Fig. 12) the reverse of a somewhat later black-figured vase of the Panathenaic class, given at Athens as a prize to the winner of a foot-race at the Panathenaea, with the foot-race (stadion) represented on it. A large number of Athenian vases of the 6th century have reached us, which bear the signatures of the potters who made, or the artists who painted them; lists of these will be found in the useful work of Klein, Griechische Vasen mit Meistersignaturen. The recent excavations on the acropolis have proved the erroneousness of the view, strongly maintained by Brunn, that the mass of the blackfigured vases were of a late and imitative fabric. We now know that, with a few exceptions, vases of this class are not later than the early part of the 5th century. The same excavations have also proved that red-figured vasepainting, that is, vase-painting in which the background was blocked out with black, and the figures left in the natural colour of the vase (Ency. Brit. xix. p. 613) originated at Athens in the last quarter of the 6th century. We cannot here give a detailed account of the beautiful series of Athenian vases of this fabric. Many of the finest of them are in the British Museum. We Fig. 10.—Suicide of Ajax. Mus. Napoleon, 66. engrave, as an example (Fig. 13), a group by the painter Pamphseus, representing Hercules wrestling with the end of our period. Neighbouring cities, and especially river-monster Achelous, which belongs to the age of the Corinth, seem to have exercised a strong influence at Athens about the 7th century. We have even a class of vases called by archaeologists Corintho-Attic. But in the course of the 6th century there is formed at Athens a

Fig. 13.—Herakles and Achelous. Wiener Vorlegeblatter, D. 6. Persian wars. The clear precision of the figures, the vigour of the grouping, the correctness of the anatomy, and the delicacy of the lines are all marks of distinction. The student of art will perhaps find the nearest parallel to these vase-pictures in Japanese drawings (q.v.). The Japanese artists are very inferior to the Greek in their love and understanding of the human body, but equal them in freshness and vigour of design. At the same time began the beautiful series of white vases made at Athens for the purpose of burial with the dead, and found in great quantities in the cemeteries of Athens, of Eretria, of Gela in Sicily, and of some other cities. They are well represented in the British Museum, and that of Oxford. We now return to the early years of the 6th century, and proceed to trace, by the aid of recent discoveries, the rise of architecture and sculpture. The Greek temple in its character and form gives the clue to the whole character of Greek art. It is the abode of the deity, who is represented by his sacred image; and the flat surfaces of the temple offer a great field to the sculptor for the Fig. 12.—Foot-race : Panathenaic vase. Mon. d. Inst. x. 48 m. depicting of sacred legend. The process of discovery has myth. One of these vases is dated, since it bears the emphasized the line which divides Ionian from Dorian name and the figure of Callias in his chariot (Mon. dell’ architecture and art. We will speak first of the temples Inst. iii. 45), and this Callias won a victory at Olympia and the sculpture of Ionia. The lonians were a people distinct and marked black-figured style. The most remarkable example of this ware is the so-called Francois vase at Munich, by Clitias and Ergotimus, recently smashed by a madman, which contains, in most careful and precise rendering, a number of scenes from Greek <TA .1 • ~ • f O Af A/ ) K •