Greek Vase Painting

STUDENTS of the history of Greek vases have been gradually led backwards from a late period to earlier and earlier stages of civilization by the course of circumstances. First of all graves were opened in Lower Italy; the first great collection of vases, formed by Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador in Naples, and published in 1791-1803, contained chiefly the output of later Italian manufactories. Next, from 1828 onwards, the doors of Etruscan graves were unlocked, and their contents proved to be the rich treasures of Greek red and black-figured vases, procured in such numbers by the Etruscans of the 6th and 5th centuries. About twenty years later a bright light was thrown on eastern Greek pottery of the 7th century by the discovery of a cemetery in Rhodes. About 1870 the ‘Geometric’ style became known and the Dipylon vases at Athens were revealed. In the seventies and eighties Schliemann’s spade unearthed the Mycenean civilization, and in the beginning of the present century we were introduced to the culmination of this period in Crete. Finally in quite recent times finds of vases of the Stone Age in Crete and in North Greece have given us a view of vase-production in the third millennium B.C. If therefore we wish to retrace this long road, we must begin at a period, of which the investigation has only just begun and which presents most difficult problems.

The excavations in Northern Greece, i.e., in North Boeotia, Phocis and above all Thessaly, have introduced us to a purelyNeolithic civilization. Here alongside of the two simpler prehistoric techniques, unornamented (monochrome) and incised ware, was discovered, even in the oldest strata, a richly developed painted style, with linear ornaments painted either in red on vases with a white slip or in white on vases made red by firing. The monochrome, red or black vases are often brilliantly polished and of excellent workmanship. In the later layers of the Stone Age finds this civilization differs considerably according to locality. One class of painted (and incised) vases is very prominent: it was found chiefly at Dimini and Sesklo, and shows quite a new principle of decoration (Fig.1). It combines curvilinear patterns, especially the spiral motive, with rectilinear decoration (zig-zag, step pattern, chequers, primitive maeander, etc.); the colouring varies, white on red, black on white, brown on yellow. Side by side with this style we find in other places the greatest variety of painted and unpainted vases: even polychrome decoration appears. In the early Bronze Age all this splendour vanishes and gives place to the production of coarse unpainted ware.

It appears that this Stone-Age Ceramic of North Greece has no connection with the finds of South Greece, and is rather to be traced to the North and the civilization of the Danube valley.

The South presents us with a much more primitive picture. The large layer of Stone Age finds, which came to light in Crete, produced vases with incised geometrical ornament, alongside of coarse undecorated pottery, but curvilinear patterns of Thessalian type are completely absent and painted vases are rare. The reason for a less elaborate development of Neolithic civilization in Crete seems to be that it gave place to the Bronze Age comparatively early: in Thessaly it seems to go down far into the second millennium.

According to these early vase finds one has thus to picture to oneself the beginnings of ceramic art. First, the most essential household vessels are fashioned by hand out of imperfectly cleansed clay, and burnt black in the open fire, and before long the outer surface is also polished, probably with smooth stones. Rectilinear ornaments are pressed or incised into the soft clay, and by degrees the method of filling and indicating the incised lines by a white substance is learned; the clay is also treated plastically, for instance channelled. Gradually the clay is made less impure, is more cleanly polished and more evenly baked in the oven, and by the actual firing has various colours, red, black, grey, yellow and brown, imparted to it. Thus a ground is also obtained for painting, on which the rectilinear ornaments are imposed with colour. Greater solidity and brighter colouring are obtained by covering the vase with a slip, which moreover sets off the painting excellently. The invention of the wrongly styled ‘varnish,’ a black colour glaze which, though technically undeveloped, appears even in North Greece of the Stone Age, is of the highest importance for the whole history of Greek vase-painting. The forms are primitive, little articulated, but already very various: the decoration covers uniformly almost the whole vase.

But the different techniques do not regularly succeed each other; inventions are not immediately communicated from one locality to another; primitive methods subsist alongside of more advanced, nay even sometimes drive them out again. This much is clear, that a section taken through these contemporaneous prehistoric civilizations would present a highly variegated aspect.

The Stone Age is succeeded by the Bronze Age, here earlier and there later; here more quickly, there more slowly; i.e., metals are gradually introduced, and with them new techniques and a new civilization. It is evident that to the earlier Bronze Age belong a series of innovations which are of decisive importance for the history of vases, the invention of the potter’s wheel, the perfection of the so-called ‘varnish,’ and the imitation of metal forms in clay. In most places the potter’s oven and the painting of vases appear only in the early Bronze Age.