History of Ancient Pottery 18

History of Ancient Pottery 18

ARCHAIC GREEK TERRACOTTAS (BRITISH MUSEUM).

1. MAN WITH RAM (RHODES); 2. PERSEPHONE (SICILY); 3. RHODES; 4. DOLL

(ATHENS).

]

 

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The earliest beginnings of the statuette proper show, as might be

expected in primitive Greek art, a very limited range of ideas. As in

marble, bronze, and wood, so also in clay, the type of the female deity

reigns supreme. The primitive Hellenic type of goddess adopts two

forms, both derived from an original in wood, the board-form or σανίς,

and the column-form (κίων or ξόανον), each of which finds parallels in

sculpture. The limbs are either completely wanting or of the most

rudimentary description, the figure terminating below in a spreading

base. Both these types are found in Rhodes, but on the mainland of

Greece the columnar form is confined to the Mycenaean period. In the

succeeding “Geometrical” age the board-like types rose into popularity

at Athens and Tegea, and above all in Boeotia. Two varieties are found,

a standing and a sitting type, and they are usually painted in the

manner of the local vases (see p. 290). The later examples show a great

advance in modelling, especially in the heads. The columnar form

exhibits its development best in the terracottas of the

Graeco-Phoenician period from Cyprus.

 

The standing and sitting goddess (Plate VIII.) are the two principal

types in archaic Greek art, and are remarkable for their wide

distribution and universal popularity. The name of the goddess may vary

with the locality, but the types remain almost identical, and the

attributes show little variation.

 

Another interesting archaic type is the so-called funeral mask or bust

(Plate VIII.), of which the best examples have come from Rhodes. Being

almost exclusively feminine, we must suppose that they ceased to

represent the image of the dead person, as in Egypt and primitive

Greece, and became images of the Chthonian goddess, Demeter or

Persephone, represented under the form of a bust rising out of the

earth.[424] Thus they played in the tombs the rôle of protection

against evil influences, like the mask of Demeter Kidaria, worn by the

priest at Pheneus in Arcadia on certain occasions.[425] Male masks are

occasionally found, representing the Chthonian Dionysos. They are very

rare after the fifth century.

 

The purely divine and mythological types in the archaic period are very

few in number. Of the Olympian deities few are represented, except in

the conventional hieratic types, hardly to be differentiated one from

another. But on certain sites are found representations of

nature-goddesses, such as the Earth-mother with a child in her lap

(Gaia Kourotrophos), or a nude goddess within a shrine, who may be a

combination of Astarte and Aphrodite. These types are of Oriental

origin, and are found in Cyprus, Rhodes, Naukratis, and Sardinia. They

may represent offerings made after child-birth. Among the

individualised deities we may point to figures of Hermes Kriophoros

(from Rhodes and Sicily),[426] of Herakles,[427] or of the local nymph

Kyrene, who appears holding the silphium-plant in a terracotta from

Carthage.[428]

 

Among miscellaneous feminine types are the _hydrophoros_ or

water-carrier, the woman riding on a mule, horse, or other animal, the

musician, and the mother nursing a child. Some of these have their

mythological counterparts, as in the Aphrodite riding on a goose, or

the Earth-mother, already mentioned. Male types are curiously rare, the

athletic influences, which are so strongly manifest in early Greek

sculpture, not affecting terracottas. The most popular is that of the

horseman, particularly in Cyprus. These figures are usually of a rude

and primitive kind, especially in Cyprus and at Halikarnassos. The

examples from Greece Proper show a more developed archaism, and are

found at Athens and in Boeotia. Sometimes instead of a horse the man

rides on a swan, mule, or tortoise.

 

Reclining male figures are sometimes characterised as Herakles or a

Satyr; but this type is most fully developed at Tarentum, in numerous

terracottas representing the well-known subject of the Sepulchral

Banquet, associated with a cult of the Chthonian deities.[429] There

are also various types of grotesque figures, usually in a squatting or

crouching attitude; some assume the form of a Satyr, and others are

obviously derived from the Egyptian figures of Ptah-Socharis, with bent

knees and protruding stomach.

 

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PLATE IX

 

[Illustration:

 

GREEK TERRACOTTAS OF HELLENISTIC PERIOD (BRITISH MUSEUM).

1, 4, TANAGRA; 2, 3, SOUTHERN ITALY.

]

 

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In the fine and later periods, from the end of the fifth century

onwards, the standing or seated feminine figures are still by far the

most prominent. The change, however, which has taken place, from

mythological to _genre_, has been described as an evolution rather than

a revolution, brought about by artistic, not religious, considerations.

The possible varieties of the feminine standing types may be best

studied in the Tanagra figures (Plate IX.), which include women or

girls in every variety of pose or attitude. In most cases the arms are

more or less concealed by the himation, which is drawn closely across

the figure; in others a fan, mirror, wreath, or mask is held in one

hand, the other drawing the edges of the drapery together. Some lean on

a column or are seated on a rock; others play with a bird or perform

their toilet. Imitations of the Tanagra figures, but vastly inferior in

merit, subsequently became popular all over the Greek world; they are

found at Myrina in Asia Minor, in Cyprus, the Cyrenaica, and many parts

of Southern Italy.

 

Among miscellaneous types of the Hellenistic period, many of the

archaic ones already mentioned retain their popularity. Others appear

for the first time, and are more in accordance with the spirit of the

age, such as girls dancing, playing with knucklebones, or carrying

one another pick-a-back. There is a beautiful group of two

knucklebone-players from Capua in the British Museum (D 161). The

dancing type is found widely distributed.

 

Figures of goddesses and mythological subjects are very rare at

Tanagra, but fairly common on other sites, as at Myrina and Naukratis.

Archaistic imitations of the archaic seated and standing goddesses are

often found in the Cyrenaica and Southern Italy; but the Chthonian

deities appear but rarely among the types of more advanced style. As in

sculpture and vase-paintings, Aphrodite now becomes the most prominent

among the feminine deities, and some of the later statuettes appear to

be reproductions of well-known works of art, the Cnidian Aphrodite, the

Anadyomene, or the crouching type of Aphrodite at the bath. Artemis and

Athena are occasionally found, but Nike (Victory) is really the most

popular figure after Aphrodite. She, however, plays little more than

the part of a female Eros, a counterpart to whom the Hellenic artist

felt to be a necessity. Formerly these winged female types were styled

Psyche, but this was a conception of post-Hellenistic origin.

 

Among the male deities the conditions remain much as before. Zeus

appears for the first time, and was especially popular at Smyrna, and

Sarapis and Asklepios are also occasionally found. In Naukratis the

influence of the Egyptian religion made itself felt in the production

of numerous figures of Bes, Harpocrates, and the like. Hermes is not

found so often as might have been expected, though there is a notable

instance in the British Museum (C 406) of a caricature of the famous

statue by Praxiteles, where a Satyr takes his place. Dionysos is only

met with occasionally, as are Satyrs and Maenads; but masks of a

Bacchic character are very common in Italy.

 

The one deity who really seems to have caught the popular taste is

Eros, although at the time when most of the Tanagra statuettes were

produced this popularity was hardly assured. The types of Eros

standing, seated, flying, or riding on animals are innumerable and

found all over the Greek world. The best examples come from Eretria in

Euboea, but Myrina and Sicily have also produced large numbers. They

vary from almost Praxitelean conceptions, like the Flying Eros from

Eretria in the British Museum (C 199), to the veritable Pompeian

_amoretti_ from the same site and from Myrina. The riding types of Eros

(on a horse, dog, swan, or dolphin) are chiefly found in the Cyrenaica

or Southern Italy. In many cases the Eros types are used for ordinary

unwinged boys.

 

Among the human male types a new feature is the introduction of the

athlete, as he appears in many boyish figures from Tanagra, and later

as a boxer among the somewhat coarse conceptions of the Roman period.

Some years ago a remarkable copy of the Diadumenos of Polykleitos in

terracotta was found in Asia Minor.[430]

 

* * * * *

 

In the tombs of the Aegean Islands, Italy, and elsewhere, a class of

ware has sometimes been found quite distinct from the ordinary fictile

pottery and resembling the porcelain or enamelled ware of the Egyptians

and Babylonians, such as the _ushabtiu_, found in the tombs of the

former, and the enamelled bricks of the latter. For the most part they

must be regarded as importations, of foreign manufacture, the medium of

commerce being the Phoenicians, who not only introduced Egyptian

objects of art, but themselves endeavoured to imitate them. Hence we

must distinguish some as of Egyptian origin, others as made by the

Phoenicians. As might be expected, they are most often found where

Phoenician influence was strong, as in Rhodes and Sardinia. Egyptian

perfume-vases have been found in the Polledrara tomb at Vulci (see

Chapter XVIII.) and may be dated by the accompanying scarabs of

Psammetichus I. as belonging to the end of the sixth century.

 

But these are by no means the earliest examples. In the Bronze Age

tombs of Cyprus occasional finds have been made of plates of blue

porcelain or faïence, with Egyptian designs going back to the

eighteenth dynasty[431]; and for several centuries other Egyptian

objects in porcelain, or with enamelled glaze, continue to be found in

the tombs of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Greece. And there is also a

considerable quantity of such wares which is not Egyptian in character,

although it may be to some extent imitative, and therefore demands

notice. Of this the most remarkable examples are the _rhyta_, or

drinking-horns, found at Enkomi in Cyprus, in 1896, and now in the

British Museum.[432] The two finest specimens are in the form of a

female head surmounted by a cup (Plate X.) and a ram’s head

respectively. Although found in tombs with Mycenaean objects, and

therefore presumably of early date, the style and modelling are so far

advanced—so purely Hellenic—that they may be compared with archaic work

of the sixth century B.C. or even later.

 

In the tombs of Kameiros in Rhodes,[433] along with Egyptian porcelain

objects, were found many vases of this ware, of apparently Greek

workmanship. This is further implied by the presence in one tomb of a

figure of a dolphin with a Greek [[Π]Υ[Θ]ΕΩ [Ε]ΜΙ], “I belong to

Pythes.”[434] It is quite conceivable that the Greeks of Rhodes (as of

Naukratis: see below) knew and practised Egyptian methods. The finds

include small _alabastra_ with friezes of men and animals in relief,

and flasks of a compressed globular shape similarly ornamented; also

_aryballi_ of various moulded forms, such as animals or helmeted heads

(Plate X. fig. 3). The vase in the form of a head seems to be an early

Phoenician idea; and this particular type of the helmeted head seems to

have been adopted subsequently by Ionian artists in the Clazomenae

sarcophagi.[435] Similar vases and figures have been discovered in the

tombs of Melos, Corinth, Cervetri, and Vulci, and also in Syria and at

Naukratis in Egypt.[436] Others again from the tombs of Kameiros and

Vulci take the form of jars of opaque glass ornamented with zigzag

patterns in white and dull crimson on a greenish ground.[437] A

specimen of somewhat similar ware was found in a Bronze Age tomb at

Curium, Cyprus, in 1895,[438] consisting of a tall funnel-shaped beaker

of blue and yellow glazed ware with an edging of dark brown (Plate X.).

The technique is superior to that of the later examples, and more on a

level with that of the porcelain _rhyta_ from Enkomi.

 

In Greece Proper there are altogether few traces of this enamelled

ware, and after the sixth century B.C. it quite disappeared. But some

very fine specimens have been found in the tombs of Southern Italy. A

jug with delicate ornamentation in blue and white came from Naples, and

a similar vase from the same site, but shaped like a _kalathos_ and of

a pale green colour, is now in the British Museum. Objects of this ware

have also been found on the site of the ancient Tharros in Sardinia.

Their glaze was a pale green, like that of the twenty-sixth dynasty

wares, and with them was found a scarab of Psammetichus I, which shows

them to be contemporaneous with the objects found in the Polledrara

tomb. But the strong Phoenician element in Sardinia is sufficient to

indicate that these fabrics are all of Egyptian importation.

 

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PLATE X

 

[Illustration:

 

PORCELAIN AND ENAMEL-GLAZED WARES (BRITISH MUSEUM).

 

4, 6, CYPRIOTE BRONZE AGE; 3, ARCHAIC GREEK (RHODES); 1, 2, 5,

GRAECO-ROMAN PERIOD.

]

 

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In the Hellenistic period, when vase-painting had reached its latest

stages, the fashion of glazed enamelled ware was revived; its chief

centre was Alexandria, which would naturally have carried on the

traditions of Egyptian porcelain or faïence. Specimens of glazed ware

with reliefs or modelled in various forms have been found at Naukratis

and in the Fayûm, including a fine blue porcelain head of a Ptolemaic

queen (Plate X.). In a tomb at Tanagra were found a beautiful _askos_

in the form of a duck on which Eros rides, and another porcelain

vase,[439] evidently imported from Alexandria, or some other industrial

centre of Hellenised Egypt. Porcelain jugs, inscribed with the names of

Arsinoe, Berenike, and one of the Ptolemies, have been found at

Benghazi in North Africa, at Alexandria, and at Canosa in Southern

Italy.[440] They are of blue ware, with reliefs of Greek style

attached. Fragments of the same kind dating from the first century B.C.

were found at Tarsos in Cilicia,[441] and in the Louvre there are

glazed wares covered with yellow or green enamel from Smyrna and Kyme.

The British Museum possesses similar vases from Kos and elsewhere, with

wreaths and similar patterns in relief (Plate X.), but these are not

earlier than the Roman period. Enamelled wares of early Roman date have

also been found on the Esquiline, and the ware is common at

Pompeii.[442]

 

It does not appear that the manufacture of these enamelled wares was

confined to one spot; they are found all over Asia Minor, Italy, and

Gaul, and in other countries bordering on the Mediterranean. It seems

probable, however, that there were three principal centres of the

fabric, at least in the Roman period. The first of these was in Asia

Minor, or the islands along its coasts, whence came the specimens found

at Tarsos, in Ionia, and in the islands such as Kos. These are mostly

small vases, of metallic form, especially in the treatment of the

handles (cf. Plate X., fig. 5), the colour being usually a bluish

green, though some examples are more polychromatic. These seem to have

been exported to Italy, and _viâ_ Marseilles to Gaul. Next, there are

the wares made at Alexandria, of which the vases described above are

examples. And, thirdly, there was a Gaulish fabric, which must probably

be located at Lezoux in the Auvergne (see Chapter XXIII.), examples

from which are found at Vichy, in the Rhone Valley, and at Trier and

Andernach in Germany.[443] Fragments of this ware are even reported to

have been found in England—as, for instance, at Ewell in Surrey, at

Colchester and Weymouth.[444] These are of grey clay with yellow,

green, or brown glaze, with ornaments of leaves, vine-branches, or

scrolls, stamped in moulds; the shapes are jugs, flasks, or two-handled

cups. A later variety is of white clay with a malachite-green glaze,

the forms being again of a metallic type, and towards the end of the

period imitations of glass with _barbotine_ decoration (see Chapter

XXIII.) appear. These two groups cover the first century after Christ.

 

Sometimes the ornamentation of the later glazed wares from Italy takes

the form of small reliefs (_emblemata_), made separately and attached

before the glaze was applied, and there are two or three specimens of

this class in the British Museum. It was also not infrequently used for

lamps, which, apart from the glaze, have all the characteristics of the

ordinary kinds, and even for figures of gladiators, boats, and other

objects. The glaze is of a thick vitreous character, and was not

improbably produced by lead; at all events a French writer[445]

maintains, in opposition to the views of Brongniart and Blümner, that

by a study of this ware he has established a knowledge of lead-glaze among the ancients.