is well known, this early civilization in the Greek world of the
second millenium B.C. was almost completely swept away,
probably by the political cataclysm of about 1000 B.C. known as
the Dorian Migration. Hellenic art proper, in its historical
continuity, represents a new start altogether and the beginnings
of it need not be sought earlier than about 800 to 700 B.C. The
art of painting had then completely lost touch with the graceful
naturalism and with the broad generalization of the “Aegean”
period, and is represented by figure designs on the so-called
“geometric” or “Dipylon” vases of the most primitive kind.
For a long time Greek painting is chiefly represented by work on
the vases, but that this may be regarded as in the strict sense
painting is shown by the fact that tablets or panels (pinakes)
that would certainly be called pictures were being painted at the
same time by the same technical methods, and in some cases by
the same craftsman, as the vases. As Klein remarks (Euphronios,2
p. 252), “the most ancient material for Greek painting
is clay in the form of the vase as well as of the pinax.” Now we
find in Pliny’s account of the beginnings of Greek painting
{Nat. Hist. XXXV. 15 seq.) certain stages indicated in the development
of technique, and we are able to illustrate these stages from
vases which correspond more or less in their chronological order
with the succession of the stages in Pliny. The correspondence
is not exact, and there are difficulties in the way of interpreting
the statements from the monuments, but the two are certainly
to be brought into connexion. According to Pliny the order of
development seems to be (i) outhnes; (2) [a] outlines filled in
with flat tints, or [b] outlines with linear inner markings but no
colour. OutUne drawing is obviously always the first stage in
the graphic art regarded as delineation, not decoration. The flat
tints without inner markings are found on “Dipylon” vases of
800–700 B.C., and as for the inner markings, though there is a
difficulty in the exact interpretation of Pliny’s words, yet inner
markings in the form of lines scratched on these silhouettes make
their appearance very early. Two further stages are indicated
by Pliny as the introduction of a red colour and the distinction
between male and female figures by a painter named Eumarus of
Athens. This would be by the use of white, which with red, an
oxide of iron, appears on vases of about 600 B.C. Eumarus is
also said to have “ventured to imitate all kinds of figures,” and
we cannot fail here to be reminded of the marvellous François
vase at Florence (fig. 8, Plate III.) of the first half of the 6th
century, which is of large size and is decorated with a wealth of
figure designs from mythological sources that are among the
most remarkable productions of the graphic art in existence.
Human figures and animals are there displayed in an extraordinary
variety of poses and illustrating all kinds of scenes, and
the execution shows a firmness of hand and patience in the
rendering of details to which no praise can do justice. The
inner markings are rendered by lines with the most scrupulous
care and finish. Cimon of Cleonae is said to have followed
Eumarus with certain improvements which are of the utmost
significance for the future of the art in Greece. He is said to
have introduced four innovations: (a) “Catagrapha,” which
Pliny explains as “profile figures” but which must mean something
more than this, seeing that profiles had been in use from
the first. “Foreshortenings” is a possible and an intelligible
rendering which moreover corresponds with what is further
ascribed to him; (b) the representation of “countenances in
different positions, looking backwards or upwards or downwards.”
The other improvements, in giving (c) the details of
anatomy and (d) “the wrinkles and folds of drapery,” are not
of so much importance as such advance is normal and necessary.
The introduction of foreshortened views is the matter of real
moment, for this is the point at which Greek painting parts
company with the older oriental traditions, and enters on a course
of its own which leads directly to all the modern developments of
the art.
The words of Pliny explaining the term “catagrapha” can be aptly illustrated from the vase paintings connected with the name of Epictetus. Epictetus was the leading figure among a company of Athenian vase decorators of the last decades of the 6th century B.C. and the beginning of the 5th, who usher in the period of the most gifted and original masters of the craft. Their work is marked by efforts to give to the human figure a vigour and expressiveness it had never before attained, and to gain their end they essay all sorts of novel and difficult problems in drawing. In connexion with Pliny’s words, Klein remarks (Euphronios, p. 47) that on their vases “the running figures look behind them; those that are jumping, revelling or fighting look up; the lifting or bending ones look down.” Some of the best vases decorated by this set of artists, who are the first to use the so-called “red-figured” technique instead of painting as the older masters had done in black on red, are for qualities of strength, variety and animation unequalled by any of their successors of the later periods, yet it is significant of the whole character of this ancient painting that they are always conspicuously more successful with profiles and objects in an upright plane at right angles to the line of sight than with any forms which involve foreshortening or perspective. They are masters of contour but are still struggling for the full command over form, and it is noteworthy that the generation of these greatest of the vase-painters had passed away before these difficulties of foreshortening had been conquered.
We have now followed on the vases the development of Greek painting up to about the time of the Persian wars, and it must be noted that in other forms, as on terra-cotta tablets or pinakes, on the flat edges of sarcophagi in the same material, and occasionally on marble slabs or stelae, the same technical characteristics are to be observed. Of painting on a monumental scale Greece proper has hitherto shown no trace, yet at this very juncture, in the decades immediately after the Persian wars, there suddenly makes his appearance one of the greatest representatives of monumental wall-painting known to the annals of the art. This is Polygnotus, who, with some worthy associates, displayed on the walls of public buildings at Athens and at Delphi a series of noble compositions on a large scale that won the admiration of the whole Hellenic community.
To find any remains of mural painting that may seem to lead up to Polygnotus and his school we have to pass beyond the bounds of Greece proper into Italy, where, alike in the Greek and Etruscan cities and also at Rome, painting in this form was practised from an early date. Pliny mentions paintings at Ardea older than the city of Rome, and some very ancient ones at Caere. Two sets of early paintings, not actually on walls but on terra-cotta slabs meant for the coating of walls, have come to light in recent times at Cervetri, the ancient Caere, some of which, in the British Museum, were dated by the late A. S. Murray at about 600 B.C. (Journal of Hellenic Studies, x. 243), while others in the Louvre may be about half a century later. True wall-paintings, of possibly a still earlier date and certainly of more primitive design, were found in the Campana tomb at Veil (Dennis, Etruria, ch. i.). The paintings from Caere are executed on a white or yellowish “slip” in a few simple colours, and exhibit single figures in a frieze-like arrangement with little attempt at action and none at grouping. The flesh of the women is left the colour of the white ground, that of the men is painted a ruddy hue. To the 6th, and first half of the 5th century, belong wall-paintings in Italian tombs, which, whether in Greek cities or in Etruscan, show distinct signs of Hellenic influence. Some of these wall-paintings (Antike Denkmäler, ii., Taf. 41–43) show considerable liveliness in colouring and in action, and a freedom and gaiety in female costume that remind us of what we read about the painting of Polygnotus (q.v.). The place of this great painter in the general history of the graphic art is given to him for his ethical greatness and the austere beauty of his single figures, which ancient writers extol. All we have to do here is fix his place in the development of painting by noting the stage at which he had arrived in the representation of nature.
The waU-paintings of Polygnotus and his school must have exhibited a large number of figures powerfully characterized in action and expression, not in a confused mass nor summarized as at Cnossus, nor grouped together as in a modern composition,
