The emergence of a new interest in myth can also be seen in the pottery of sixth-century Athens. In the seventh century, as has been seen, Corinthian pottery, with its riot of animal life, reigned supreme. The Athenian Geometric style had been completely displaced by it and in the early sixth century even the Athenian potters were adapting Corinthian styles, letting their animals run in disorder round the vases. By 570, however, the Athenians had resumed control of their pottery. On the Pran9ois vase (exported to Italy and named after its finder) of this date, the painter Cleitias composed over 200 figures. There are some unrelated animals prancing around one band of the vase that echo the style absorbed from Corinth. However, most of the figures are related to each other and portray the myths surrounding the life of the hero Achilles, including the marriage of his parents, Peleus and Thetis, and the games held in honour of his dead companion Patroclus.
There are two simultaneous developments. First, the painter is imposing a unity of theme so that by the 530s, painters such as the superb Exechias are concentrating on a single event—a game of dice between the two heroes Ajax and Achilles, for instance, or the moment when the mast of the boat bearing the god Dionysus sprouts into a fruitful vine. Secondly, there is the preoccupation with myth. On these fine pots portrayals of daily life are rare. As with the sculptures of the treasuries, this is the world of the gods and heroes. Traditionally it has been believed that the pots themselves were used for the drinking parties of the aristocracies, the symposia, and they reflect the interests of this class. There are distinct types, the amphora for wine, the hydria for carrying in water, the krater for mixing the two. The guests would then sip from kylices, elegant drinking cups.
In about 525 there is another development. Instead of the figures on a vase being painted in black on an orange background, the process is reversed. Figures are now left in orange/red with the background being painted black. One painter, the so-called
Andokides Painter, who worked on pots from the workshop of the potter Andokides, used both black and red figures on the same pot but without changing the format in any way. Another painter in the same workshop, Psiax, went further. He grasped that while the details of black figures had to be engraved in the silhouette with a sharp tool, red figures could be drawn on and so the artistic possibilities enlarged. Psiax initiated a revolution in style. By the end of the sixth century, when red-figure painting was adopted by a group of Athenian potters known as the Pioneers, the new freedom given to painters was being exploited to the full. Not only are the details of each figure more exact, the figures themselves take on a new lease of life. They jump, tumble, and race across the whole surface of the pots and some are shown foreshortened. ‘The invention of the technique of showing foreshortened figures was, writes the art historian J. J. Pollitt, ‘both from a technical and conceptual point of view one of the most profound changes ever to have occurred in the history of art.’ The concern of the patrons of this pottery remains, however, largely the same—representations of myth or of scenes of aristocratic life. No one would have guessed from them that the Greek world was one that depended so totally on the labour of farmers.
The phrase ‘a new lease of life’ is suitable for explaining what happened next. In the last thirty years of their production, the kouroi gradually become more natural and relaxed in their pose. The temple sculptures become less wooden and exploit the spaces they are given—on the triangular pediments, for instance—more successfully. The sculptures of the great temple of Zeus at Olympia of about 460 Bc (see p. 247 below) show a real understanding of the feelings and moods of the participants. This is the dawning of a new age, when, in the famous words of the fifth-century philosopher Protagoras, ‘man is the measure of all things’. Although the nature of the relationship has been much argued over, it is often associated with the victory of Greece over the Persians and, in Athens, with the triumph of democracy. However, it could not have happened if there had not also been a revolution in intellectual thought, a revolution that saw the birth of western philosophy. (See also Interlude 3.)
World History
