Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/287

 234 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. headlong to the earth, where the beast worries him in vainly trying to shake him off. Tall trees enframe the composition, one on each side ; but to what species they belong it is difficult to say. The figures on the other vase which correspond to the netted bull, are two bulls standing close to each other; one faces the spectator, but the head of the other is turned towards his companion, as if about to converse with him (Fig. 363). This group is separated by a shady tree from a third bull, slowly moving along, his head lowered to the ground. On the left is another bull, whom a man leads by a string fastened to his hind leg. We feel that the animal is not likely to give his captor much more trouble. True, he pulls and obeys unwillingly enough, but the lasso has done its work, and knocked all go out of him. He spends the little energy which remains to him in filling the air with heart-rending lowing. Behind him is a tree, like that on the other side of the handle. We have no difficulty in grasping the idea which the artist wished to express in these two pictures. It is self-evident that the first is intended for a bull-hunt, and that in the second we have the animal led away captive. The two scenes are enacted on the same spot, a narrow gorge and grazing ground on the hill-side, and the same actors appear in both ; the mighty bull who must be tamed and his strength utilized on the one hand, and on the other the primitive man who risks his life in this hazardous pursuit, and will presently reduce to nought the beast's murderous attacks which have so long terrified him, by tying ropes round his horns and putting a yoke on his neck. There can be no doubt that the scenes were intended to balance each other. The artist seems to have delighted in strongly-contrasted themes taken from the same sphere ; here the stormy bull- hunting, there the issue of the drama. The general composition and blocking out of the two scenes were conceived by one and the same artist ; yet were these even less intimately allied than they are to each other in unity of subject, we should still have no hesitation in proclaiming their unity of origin. Both exhibit the same processes, the same work and style, the same way of indicating the costume and accessories. To say that the vases have sprung from the same school does