Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/313

 CERAMICS IN CYPRUS. 287 arranged as to have a subtle but satisfactory analogy to the belts and girdles worn by man- and woman-kind. Here we find our ideas as it w'ere upset by vertical bands, which represent nothing and suggest nothing but their own insecurity. Such a mistake would never have been committed by a Greek potter. We must not forget to mention another series of vessels which bear witness to the taste for strange and complex forms already alluded to ; I mean those in which the shape of this or that animal is more or less roughly imitated. Sometimes the resem- blance is very distant ; the potter has contented himself with FIG. 220. Oval bottle. From Cesnola. 1 giving his production four legs, a rounded body, a tail which acts as neck and mouth, and a fanciful head with hints at horns and ears (Fig. 222). We know well enough that he has meant to suggest a quadruped, but we cannot guess what particular animal he may have been thinking of. The decoration is merely a hatch- ing of red on a very light ground. In Fig. 223 we find a com- posite animal, the head and body of a bull with the neck and beak of a large bird for its tail. We repeat the head and chest of this animal on a larger scale to show the details of its decoration (Fig. i Cyprus, p. 405-