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NOW for the first time the history of Greek vases proper begins. In the pottery of the geometric style are latent the forces, which we see afterwards expanding in contact with the East, as well as the oldest beginnings that we can trace of that brilliant continuous development, which led to the proud heights of Klitias, Euphronios, Meidias. Its producers may be unreservedly described as Greeks: Hellas has come into being. However primitive the civilization of this early Greece may have been, however patriarchal is the picture which Homer, the great genius of this period, gives us of this world, however much the works of art described by him point to Mycenean reminiscences and Phoenician importation, yet in the department of ceramics the art of this time was thoroughly original and highly developed, and it is from the vases that this early phase gets its name.

We should like to have a glimpse of the origin of the Geometric style, but its beginnings are shrouded in darkness. It cannot be regarded as simply a descendant of the pre-Mycenean Geometric pottery, which in outlying parts continued throughout the Bronze Age; for in its ‘varnish’ technique, its forms and decoration, it is totally different from those primitive vessels. As little is it a direct continuation of the Mycenean style, from which it took over the technique of painting. However much towards the end of its development the latter inclined to decoration in bands and the geometrizing of ornament, it was an outworn poor style that arose out of schematizing of living forms, in complete contrast with the clear concise Geometric style, which consistently unfolds and exhausts its individuality.

Naturally the Mycenean style did not disappear abruptly from the face of the earth, and there are transitional forms, which cannot be nicely divided. They must not be too highly estimated; they are, it is true, at the beginning of the new development, but do not influence it. Thus the ‘Salamis’ vases, and their parallels from Athens, Nauplia, and Assarlik in Southern Asia Minor, show this transition, retaining in part Mycenean forms like the stirrup vase, and Mycenean ornaments like the spiral, but being in fact an insignificant ware, of bad workmanship and meagre decoration. More interesting is the survival of Mycenean traditions in Crete, the home of the Minoan style, and in the Argolid, the chief seat of late Mycenean civilization: certain vase-shapes, hatched triangles, concentric circles and semi-circles on the shoulder are retained from the old style.

From these and other Mycenean reminiscences the unfolding of the new style cannot be explained any more than by a revival of pre-Mycenean Geometric styles. We must rather bring in, to explain the phenomenon, those movements of peoples, the driving out of southern Mycenean civilization by races advancing from the North, and the new mixture of blood, which strengthened and made dominant the northern European element. Though the Dorians did not develop the style as conspicuously as other tribes, there arose out of the ferment caused by their appearance on the scene the new creative vigour, the Greek element proper, which, out of the frozen traditions of the mainland and the lifeless relics of Mycenean art created a new style and a firm basis for a fine development.

The Geometric style makes a virtue of the necessities of rude beginnings; out of the simple decorative material at its disposal, it creates a rich system. Angular patterns, rows of dots, strokes, ‘fish-bones,’ zig-zags, crosses, stars, hooked crosses, triangles, rhombi, hook maeanders, maeanders broken up in different ways, maeander systems, chequers, net patterns are most common; alongside of them are circles and rosettes neatly made with the compass. The wavy line, which like the snake edged with dots perhaps comes from Mycenean polyps, takes a second place; all other free ornamentation is eschewed; the place of continuous spirals is taken by circles connected by tangents. Thus the ornamentation appears to be steeped in mathematics, and the same is the case with the representation of living beings. Man and animal alike appear in stylized silhouettes, which bring the various parts of the body into the simplest possible scheme, and set them off sharply against one another. Thus the human breast appears as an inverted triangle and is shown frontally, but the legs and head are in profile. The head, which is only emancipated from the silhouette style in the succeeding period, already often has a space reserved in it to indicate the eye. As a rule the human body is represented naked, while towards the end of the period, the instances of clothing, especially of women, become more numerous. There has been division of opinion as to whether this nudity reproduces actual life. That is certainly not the case. “This is the nudity of the primitive artist, of the abstract linear style. It is not man as he actually is, but the concept ‘man’ which is to be rendered, and clothes are no part of this concept.” (Furtwängler). These oldest Greek representations of man are not, properly speaking, reproductions of nature, but a kind of mathematical formulæ;, which gradually in the course of centuries of fresh observation of

PLATE X.

Fig. 18. ATTIC GEOMETRIC AMPHORA (DIPYLON CLASS).

Fig. 19.

GEOMETRIC AMPHORA, PROBABLY ATTIC (BLACK DIPYLON CLASS).

nature become richer, corporeal, living, spiritual. Animal representation begins also in the same formulistic manner. The choice is in contrast with the Minoan animal world: there is complete absence of the Oriental animal world of fancy; we only see the Northern fauna; horses, roes, goats, storks, geese. The animals stand upright, graze, or rest with neck turned round. The technique is always that of the pure silhouette; only the birds often, as in the pre-Mycenean and late Mycenean styles (Figs. 4 and 15), show hatched or cross-hatched inner drawing of the body.

These geometric ornaments and abstract silhouettes of men and animals form the complete stock out of which the artist of the period provides for the decoration of his vases. With them he fills the bands into which he loves to divide the vase (Fig. 18); or at all events the shoulder or handle band, constructively the most important, in which case he covers the lower part of the vase with black (Fig. 19) or with parallel rings (Fig. 23). The bands, the breadth of which is varied, are filled in two ways. Either we have continuous ornaments, and processions of animals, chorus dancers, warriors, chariots and horses, which in this style are essentially nothing but ornament; or he divides the bands, and particularly the handle bands (Fig. 19) vertically into rectangular fields, metopes as they are called. The metope naturally takes a different scheme of filling the space from the band; if the latter prefers a continuous series, the former requires ornaments complete in themselves, like circles and rosettes, or in the case of figures, the antithetical group, the heraldic opposition of two different fields of figures, or of two figures in the same field. The figures connected by compulsion of space are then more closely united by a central motive, and there arise ornamental compositions not at all drawn from actual life, e.g. two birds both holding in their beaks a fish or a snake, two horses with crossed fore-legs, rearing towards each other, tied to a tripod, or held by a man with a bridle, two roes with raised fore-legs leaning against a tree. Band and metope with their compulsory schematism no longer suffice for the growing need of representation: in the large vases the chief band is often made very high, or in the upper part of the vase a rectangle adorned with ornament or figures is left out from the surrounding black: thus arises the vase with special field for subjects.

Legend, which in this period found its brilliant expression in the Epics of Homer and Hesiod, is still very much in the background in these vase-paintings. Centaurs only begin to be represented on late Geometric vases. Scenes such as the embarkation on the bowl from Thebes (Fig. 21) cannot be interpreted otherwise than mythically, as the rape of Helen by Paris or of Ariadne by Theseus, since on Geometric bronze fibulæ from Boeotia it is certain that legendary scenes are intended. The battle scenes too, with their duellists surrounded by spectators and their fights on a large scale by land and sea, must be inspired by the Heroic Saga. But far more numerous are the scenes of daily life, which are connected with the sepulchral purpose of the vases. We see the dead man lying on the bed of state, covered with a big cloth; men, women, and children, with arms raised to their heads in token of grief, are standing, sitting and kneeling around him; we see the bier placed on the hearse, and amid loud lamentation of the populace driven to the cemetery, while, in honour of the deceased, chariot-races and mimic battles are represented and dances are performed to the sound of flutes and lyres.

As the human form is rendered without any feeling for bodily shape, so all the representations are without any spatial sense. Chariot floors and table surfaces are not fore-shortened, the breast of the dead man lying on the bier

PLATE XI.

Fig. 20. UPPER HALF OF A DIPYLON GRAVE-VASE.

Fig. 21. ‘THE RAPE OF HELEN,’ ON A BOWL FROM THEBES.

is represented in front view, the covering of the corpse is visible in its complete extent, as if it hung down upon it; in the case of pairs of horses the off horse is simply moved forward and represented smaller; masses of men are rendered by files of similar figures; figures to be thought of as in the background, e.g. the hinder rows in the Helen bowl (Fig. 21) are placed high up. The space, which contains the figures, is an ideal tectonic space, the surface of the vase to be adorned. Where the figures do not suffice to fill this space, the Geometric artist regards it as a gap in the decoration of the vase and fills the void with dots, rows of zig-zags, hooked crosses, rosettes with a central point, and actually paints birds or fishes between the legs of horses or between the chariot and the bier which rests upon it (Fig. 20).

This even covering of the surface gives the vases of this period a carpet-like appearance, and this textile impression is strengthened by the geometry of the ornamentation, by the angular stylization of the living beings, by the decorative schemes and the division into bands. But on this account to derive the whole style from the imitation of works of the loom would be a mistake; the stylistic limitations of the style cannot be identified straight off with the technical limitation of weaving. As in all primitive civilizations so in the formation of the Geometric vase style, simple linear patterns may have been taken over from weaving and plaiting: but this is not the case with circles and rosettes, and anyhow such a consistent and systematic perfection as that of the Geometric vase style is inconceivable as an imitation of a foreign technique.

Greek ceramic art never completely lost this ‘textile’ character, and never quite renounced the Geometric school through which it passed, though by centuries of labour it freed itself from the defects and crudities of that school. Vase-figures long exhibit their origin out of the ornamental silhouette; the decorative schemes of arrangement in rows and of antithetic groups are always breaking out afresh; the principle of using up the space is applied superficially for some time and only gradually refined; the decoration in bands subsists for a long time beside the vases with a pictorial field, and remains of it exist till late; the disinclination for deepening the field, based on a correct structural feeling, goes through the whole history of Greek vases and keeps the ornamental figure world of the vases always at a distance from the much less constrained world of free painting.

The Geometric vases have not merely a historical meaning, but a value of their own. They are not a preliminary stage, but something complete. In them Greek art in true Greek fashion worked out a thought; expressed itself for the first time in a classical way, if the phrase may be used; out of a clumsy rustic style with poor ornamentation developed vases of technical perfection, compact and clear in form, consistently thought out in the decoration now lavishly, now sparingly spread over them, in their austere beauty true children of the Greek genius.

But this style did not put out everywhere equally fine flowers. It was not, like the late Mycenean, an ‘imperial’ style, but, from the first—and this is significant for Greek art—differentiated and conditioned by locality; each region had its own manufacture of vases, and its own Geometric style. Already the lead is taken by that place, which later was to drive out of the field all competitors, viz., Athens. The Dipylon vases—the name usually given to Attic Geometric vases from the fact that most of them were found in the cemetery before the Dipylon Gate,—rise in form, technique and decoration to the greatest perfection and highest richness. In the magnificent amphoræ, as much as two metres in height, which are worthy of their monumental use as tomb decoration, the Geometric style perhaps reaches its culmination; in the so-called black Dipylon vases, often only sparingly decorated on the shoulder or neck and otherwise covered black, we get already an effect of colour which became popular much later; the stock of forms is ampler, the maeander more developed, the delight in telling a story and in representing a scene greater than in other Geometric styles. Beside the Dipylon there is a second site in Attica, Eleusis, though not so important; Boeotia too must be mentioned, the pottery of which makes a provincial impression, and is dependent in forms, patterns and subjects on Attica and the Aegean islands, as also that of the neighbouring Eretria in Euboea.

The prototypes of the big Boeotian and Eretrian amphoræ with high stem and broad neck have been found particularly in Delos and Rheneia, richly ornamented vases ‘de luxe,’ in which the painting is laid on a white slip. In the same place, where the cult of Apollo had a great attraction, several other Geometric classes were also found, among them the precursors of the art which flourished in the 7th century and which is usually ascribed to the island of Melos. On the Delian vases horses and human representations occur, but generally in this class there is a disinclination to represent figures. The same disinclination and the frequent use of a light slip characterize the pottery of the Dorian island of Thera, which developed a very definite though sober and monotonous Geometric style that seems to have obstinately persisted till well into the 7th century. The rich finds of other classes bear witness to an active trade with the mainland, other Cyclades, and the Ionic East, the pottery of which has many points of contact with the Cycladic. We know it from Miletus and other places on the Asiatic coast, but above all from the island of Rhodes. The Rhodian Geometric vases are distinguished from the Cycladic by the absence of the light slip, and seem in spite of many points of contact never to have reached the same level. An isolated vegetable ornament, the so-called palm-tree, points to relations with Cyprus. Cross-hatched rhombi and birds are very much in vogue; they appear also in loose arrangement on the ‘Bird kylikes,’ which in post-Geometric times extended from Rhodes over the Ionian region and so made their way to the Greek mainland, Italy and Sicily.

The most important Peloponnesian manufactures are: (1) that of Sparta, which now to some extent adopts the white slip later predominant; (2) that of Argos, which soon discards its Mycenean reminiscences and develops on parallel lines with the Attic ware without attaining to the heights and richness of the Dipylon vases; (3) above all, the so-called Protocorinthian.

This Geometric style, which next to the Attic had the greatest future before it, seems to be at home in the Northern Argolid (p. 34). Its early Geometric beginnings we do not know. It is akin to its Argive neighbour in many points, in the scantiness of its stock of forms, in shapes like the metallic krater with a stirrup-handle. Unfortunately little has been left to us of the large-sized vases, kraters, cauldrons, amphoræ and jugs. The two-handled cup (Fig. 23), the round box, the globular oil-flask, the deep drinking-cup, the jug with flat bottom (Fig. 33) are the favourite smaller shapes. The limitation of the decoration to the upper margin, and the decoration of the rest with parallel stripes is characteristic. This ware was more exported than any other Geometric class; it entered the southern Argolid, went by way of Corinth and Eleusis to Boeotia and Delphi, and was exported to Aegina and Thera, Italy and Sicily. On Italian soil, in the Euboean

PLATE XII.

Fig. 22. RHODIAN GEOMETRIC JUG.

Fig. 23. PROTOCORINTHIAN GEOMETRIC SKYPHOS.

colony of Kyme, it certainly founded a branch factory, which quickly took on a local character and exported in its turn; but in various other places also the style evoked local imitations.

The Protocorinthian style owed its brilliant future both to the Geometric foundation, and, as will appear, to the strong influence of Cretan Art. In Crete, after the settlement of the Dorians in the island, no definite Geometric style was formed: the Mycenean traditions were too strong and the relations with the East too close. After the purely Geometric vases, among which wide-bellied amphoræ without a neck are common, there soon appear vases showing Cyprian influence, particularly small jugs with concentric circles on the body (precursors of Fig. 27); thus a pitcher from Kavusi, which by an exception has figures on it (a charioteer and mourning women in a metope-like arrangement) is apparently, in shape as well as in the ornament which consists of a row of ‘S’s’ on their backs and the un-Geometric drawing of its silhouettes, dependent on similar Cyprian models.

Crete with its loosely-rooted Geometric style took up the new elements more freely than other localities, where at first they are placed side by side with the native ones, like the palm-tree on Rhodian vases, the Cyprian circles on Attic and Protocorinthian jugs, the precursors of the tongue pattern on Attic and Theran vases, the unsystematic rays on Attic and Protocorinthian ware, the running spiral probably borrowed from metal work on Protocorinthian and Theran vases. Moreover, figured representations from an alien world of ideas creep into the fixed Geometric systems, as for instance the two lions devouring a man on a Dipylon vase, the goddess flanked by two animals on a Boeotian amphora, the fabulous creatures on Rhodian vases.

These foreign elements, which have their root in Oriental art, are the harbingers of a complete revolution, and in them is heralded the end of the Geometric style. It is obvious that a decorative style like the Geometric could have no future: its possibilities were quickly exhausted, even where the style was most richly developed. Its dissolution would have come, even if superior civilization with richer methods of decoration had not been in close contact of trade and intercourse with this early Greek world, and exercised on it a persistent influence. The Cretans and Eastern Greeks lived in the immediate neighbourhood of Egypt and Asia, the islands and the mainland were united to the East by active trade relations. In particular Phoenician merchants, while the Geometric style was flourishing, handed on to the Greeks the products of Oriental art, as both the Epic and the finds testify. Nor did the Greeks remain at home either, but had long become a seafaring people; Attic, Boeotian and Protocorinthian painters proudly place representations of ships on Geometric vases; the statistics of the finds of the various Geometric wares show a constantly growing trade intercourse. Colonisation too has already begun, and is ever expanding; according to the earliest vase finds Syracuse, Kyme, and perhaps also Massilia and the Black Sea coast received settlers, while their mother-cities still had Geometric pottery. Since Syracuse was founded in the second half of the 8th century and its oldest graves contain late Geometric vases, we obtain an approximate date for the end of the Geometric style.

The objects of Oriental Art, which were brought before the eyes of the Greeks by this active intercourse, powerfully stimulated their fancy. The crowd of decorative motives from vegetation, the world of fantastic animals, and the superiority of Oriental Art in the rendering of life, drew Greek vase-painting out of Geometric uniformity and pointed it to new paths.

PLATE XIII.

Fig. 24. ATTIC GEOMETRIC KYLIX.

Figs. 25 & 26. CRETAN JUGS IN THE FIRST ORIENTALISED STYLE.