Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/315

 CERAMICS IN CYPRUS. 289 width ; they had a head and a mouth, a neck and a body ; they had arms and they might have feet. Such resemblances dis- pose us to follow with interest the attempts of the artist to suggest the forms of man and still more of woman, in the shapes of his vases. The female form is rounder and more sinuous in its lines than the male, while its ample chevelure and extraneous adornments in the shape of earrings, necklaces and so on, make it peculiarly well fitted to the purposes of the ceramist. FlG. 222. Vessel in the form of a quadruped. The series opens with examples in which the idea is no more than hinted at; of such is a rude amphora on which the potter has given a coarse representation of the human face by means of a few daubs of colour and a dab of clay (Fig. 227). There is no indication of sex ; the whole thing is as simple and abstract as possible. In a vase chosen for reproduction on account of its fine preservation and the originality of its shape, a great advance has been made (Plate IV). Here the neck of the vase is a woman's head. The face, modelled as carefully as that of a terra-cotta figurine, is surrounded by carefully arranged masses of hair, from which long curls hang down VOL. II. p P