Douris and the Painters of Greek Vases

This book has not been written for the professional archæologist. While speaking of Douris, we propose to give the reading public an idea of the chief characteristics of Greek painting.

It may be asked why the title of this little book is not Polygnotos or Parrhasios. As we are treating of ancient painting, why not choose as a study one of these famous men, whose works give to the art of his time its distinctive character?

The answer is simple. Not a single painting is preserved by the masters who, with the sculptors Phidias, Polykleitos, Praxiteles, and Lysippos, made the ages of Pericles and Alexander illustrious. Not a fragment of their paintings nor a piece of their frescoes has escaped destruction. Unfortunate chance has thus kept the most glorious period of Greek painting hidden from our view. Recent discoveries in Mycenæ, Tiryns, Crete, and Melos have revealed astonishing works of the pre-Hellenic age, and they have restored to us frescoes contemporary with Minos and Agamemnon. And for more than a century the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum have made known all the details of the decoration of Roman houses at the time of Augustus and Titus. But between these two periods—separated by fifteen or twenty centuries—all is obscurity,—a dark gap which a few marble panels in the museum of Athens are quite insufficient to cover. These pale remnants of funereal monuments from the Kerameikos, frescoes painted on marble, reproduced the life and likeness of the departed.

Literature still remains. Pausanias, Pliny, Lucian, and others have enumerated and described the celebrated works of ancient painting, and indicated the chief characteristics of the great masters. In certain passages even the technique is mentioned and analysed. With the help of this literature we can, in a general way, trace the history of Greek painting, and it is chiefly from these records that such classic books have been written as Brunn’s Geschichte der Künstler and Woltmann’s Geschichte der Malerei. For gaining a thorough knowledge of the data of the subject, the great value of these books is unquestionable.

But there is no doubt that a history compiled from texts becomes excessively dry, even though illustrations are borrowed from Pompeii and Herculaneum. What impression would any one who had never seen a painting by Raphael or Michelangelo receive by merely reading about them?

Furthermore, many ancient authors, far from being accurate or full in their information, are hopelessly brief; often the subject of a painting and the name of its author are mentioned in but three words. Let us suppose that two thousand years hence our descendants should find a guide-book and read, “The Sacred Grove of the Muses, by Puvis de Chavannes.” What conclusions could they draw in regard to the composition of the painting or the talent of its author? Such is our position in regard to many works of antiquity. Even if, as is sometimes the case, the descriptions are full, as in a passage where Pausanias enumerates all the persons in the two frescoes of Polygnotos at Delphi, The Visit to Hadesand The Capture of Troy, the same darkness still exists as to the placing of the figures, their expression, their attitude, and the technique of the colouring.