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Ancient Greek Art

Modern students of Grecian archaeology do not doubt that the Greeks of different epochs were as successful in painbing of stately and religious subjects and of painting and drawing in a slighter and more popular way as they were in sculpture; but this is merely an inference. Absolutely nothing remains of Greek painting of high class. The figures on Greek painted vases are noticed for their admirable disposition and the beautiful designs made of their combinations, and the technical system followed, sometimes by drawing on the clay with a hard point, sometimes without that help and drawn evidently with the brush alone. The use of pigment, too, generally black but sometimes of other colors, can be perfectly understood; but this is all of the simplest character, nor can conclusions be drawn about the wall-paintings or panel-paintings of the Greeks.

In the houses of Pompeii there are many wall-paintings which seem to have had a non-Italian and probably Greek origin, and furthermore it is known that Pompeii was a town of Greek settlement and retained much Grecian influence even under the Roman Empire. Some portrait heads have been found in Egypt painted on panel (that is, thin boards) and these are certainly non-Egyptian; they may be assumed to be Greek, of the Alexandrian epoch. In these, however, there is no background, no added incident, which might provide knowledge of Greek design in Graphic art. Finally, some paintings discovered u> Rome, though belonging to houses of late date, are altogether Greek in design; and these may well be reduced copies, or imitations, of famous originals 300 years earlier.

None of these paintings are of great importance. None of them give an exalted idea of the painting which stood for their original impulse. The statements made by ancient writers with regard to the paintings of their own time and those who were then famous as having belonged to earlier times, are of very little use, because there is no standard with which to compare their critical remarks, and furthermore because no one of the books remaining to us from antiquity seems to be the work of a man greatly interested in fine art. For this reason the paintings on the vases are worthy of the most minute examination.

The earliest style in which the subjects represented are at all elaborate are of the epoch called the Mycenaean. Those vases are rich in patterns of scrolls, bands, zig-zags and spots with, somewhat rarely, animal forms introduced in bands and (as in Crete and Cyprus) as a principal subject apd covering a large part of the body of the vase. The painting is generally in brownish red on a dull yellow ground, which is the natural color of the clay. The famous Warrior Vase found at Mycenae and now in the Central Museum at Athens and which is supposed to date from 1000 BC, has much of that grotesque indifference to form and perfect satisfaction with an indication of meaning which some associate with barbaric art in all ages: the human form is drawn without any comeliness or grace and without any success in getting control of gesture; but the purpose is clear, viz., the displaying of a procession of warriors wearing large helmets, carrying great shields of the curious kidney shape long afterward associated with certain Asiatic influences, and carrying spears in the right hand, which spears have sometimes two heads or what seem to be heads.

The paintings on pottery which are of the most interest are those of the period beginning about 600 BC and ending about 150 BC. The earlier pieces are, of course, difficult to date even approximately. They represent warriors engaged in battle, the scene forming a broad band running around the vase; lions, bulls and stags arranged again in horizontal bands; figures draped in long garments, men as well is women carrying stringed instruments, weapons, baskets and the like; ocasionally a scene which can be identified, as where Hercules brings the Erymanthian boar to show to his brother, King Eurystheus, or where Peleus is about to carry off Thetis from among her attendant nymphs; or they represent a feast, with men reclining on couches and others acting as attendants bringing pitchers and vases to fill the cup held by the reclining guest. The beautiful black glaze of the vases is used sometimes as the pigment for the figures and sometimes to work the background around the figures. These styles are known as the black-on-red or black figure style, the other as the red-on-black or red figure style, and this latter style is known as the later of the two. There is still another form which is generally the latest of In this the black glaze is worked over the whole vase except for a panel or medallion or «ven a band around the vase, which is left in the red color of the pottery, and upon this the figures are painted in black.

From the 5th century on the drawing is extremely vigorous and significant. It is grotesque sometimes, as where the muscles are given excessive prominence or where the attitude is exaggerated in the attempt to make it tell the story; but everywhere the drawing of the outline and the filling in with color shows singular mastery. In a few cases the drawing itself is faultless; but in by far the greater number of cases, even of a good time, it is rather the evidently slight and swift work of a man familiar with nature and with the best traditions of art but not using his whole strength in the slight painting of the earthenware. The use of pigments other than the black glaze is not very frequent; but a red somewhat brighter than the color of the clay is used, also a kind of violet, more rarely a green, and in some cases gilding is applied — especially in late and very elaborate work. A small class of vases, identified with the city of Athens, has the body covered with a solid coat of white, upon which figures are painted in various bright colors; but this work is perishable.

In close connection with the drawing and painting applied to pottery is the engraved work on the backs of bronze mirrors, on pieces of armor, and on cists. Even as in modern times some of the most elaborate and precious drawing is that of the engraver working on copper-plate, so the Grecian draughtsman put some of his finest work on those engravings meant for pure decoration. As there are no free drawing on paper or plaster or wood — nothing that shows how the Greek drew with a free hand — it is only possible to reason backward from the firm and resolute setting down of lines drawn on the resistant material with the sharp point, and infer the vigor and daring of the more unfettered design.

Sculpture in its different forms is, after all, that which Greece has left which is most important. There are the marble reliefs carved upon temples, tombs and the walls of sacred enclosures, and also a great numberof slabs which, when more than two or three feet in either dimension are generally tombstones, but which, when small, are frequently mere records carved upon a boundary stone or a memorial, or else a votive slab dedicated at the shrine of some divinity. In all of these the propriety and the freedom of design are wonderful and, in relief sculpture at least, the Greeks have set an example which has never been equalled since, neither in the actual beauty of the form nor in the intelligence shown in the composition.

The most wonderful of the low reliefs are those of the famous frieze which forms the crowning member of the wall of the Parthenon within the screen of columns, the wall of the naos or cella. The well known fact that this whole composition was painted in bright colors changes at once ideas as to its decorative effect as a part of the building, but modern students can form no correct idea of the appearance of elaborate sculptures painted in an artistical fashion because they have never seen anything of the kind. One special reason why the reliefs are peculiarly important to modern students is their undoubted originality.

The sculptures found at Phigalia, at Halicarnassus, at Xanthos, and at Gjolbaschi in Asia Minor are the undoubted work of the 4th and 5th centuries, and moreover they were designed for the places in which they were found. This is not so with statues and busts, for of all the great world of Grecian statuary only three or four undoubted originals of the first rank remain. The Hermes of Praxiteles was found as Pausanius saw it in the 2d century AD; the Winged Victory of Paionios also; and these two were found in the excavations at Olympia in Greece.

Statues of somewhat less importance have been found in the islands of the Greek archipelago and in specially protected underground chambers in the mainland of Europe, and a number of splendid bronzes were found in a single great country house at Herculaneum near Naples; but as a general thing it has to be settled by internal evidence whether the piece discovered is of unmingled Greek character or of a less simple and perfect later style.

The statues of the pediments, however, those which once stood at either end of the Parthenon, the temple of Zeus at Olympia, the great temple of ^igina, and those which seem to have been placed between the columns of the Nereid Monument at Xanthos, are almost as certainly of their apparent epoch as are the basreliefs of the same buildings. Thus there are a score of fairly complete marble statues, two or three bronze statues of the highest rank, and a dozen less important ones, a score of lifesize busts, and many smaller bronzes, all of which are assuredly of the best time of Greek art.

Knowledge of this subject is greatly helped by the study of engraved gems and coins. The gems were used for seals, or set in finger rings worn hung by a string, and the materials used were, of course, very hard stones, such as chalcedony and sardonyx; though glass was used also, and some seals are engraved in gold. The figure engraved in intaglio can be seen as if in relief when the stone is transparent and is looked at from the back. But commonly the student takes a cast in plaster or wax and studies that relief together with the original hollow sculpture of the gem. The number of these gems in public and private collections is very great, even whe nconsidering only those of undoubted Grecian origin.

The coins are, in art, of the same character as the gems, because they are struck from a die, which die has been engraved in the same way in which the intaglio in hard stone is engraved; that is, the artist in either case keeps in mind the future relief and carves his hollow or sunken design rather with a view to its utility as a die than as to its own appearance. Greek coins are the subject of much and careful study among modern students. Greek sculpture includes also the earthenware figurines which have been found in great number in the neighborhood of Smyrna, in Sicily and the other islands of the Mediterranean, and especially in the neighborhood of Tanagra in Greece.