History of Western Paintings - V - Ancient Greece (Part Three)
Hyria with Women at the Fountain. 530 B.C.
Vulci, Museo di Villa Giulia, Rome
Non-mythological subjects also appear on vases. In one example, a group of women at a fountain appropriately decorates a hydria, or water jug. Several vases have images relating to the Panathenaic games, festivals held in Athens similar to the Olympic games which first took place in 776 B.C. (The Olympics were discontinued by the Romans in 394 A.D. only to resume more than fifteen hundred years later, in 1896). Greek vases often depict actual athletic events, such as footraces. Because they competed nude, athletes were a favourite subject for Greek artists interested in depicting the human body. This type of vase might have been given as a prize to a winning athlete.
Three Participants in a Footrace at the Panathenaic Games. 6th centrury B.C.
Black figured apmhora. Musee Vivenel, Compiegne, France
This vase was given as a prize to the winner of a footrace at the Panathenaic Games. What the Greeks considered the naturally beautiful human figure, whether the mortal or immortal, had become the main subject of vase painting by this time. Athletes, because they competed nude, were a favourtite subject of Greek artists perfecting the depiction of the human form. The arrangement of small figures and patterns in the horizontal registers, characteristic of the “geometric” and “orientalising” styles, is replaced in Archaic Greek vases, such as the one illustrated here, by larger less crowded scenes
The Greeks saw themselves as a rational, civilized, and dignified people, and thus superior to the Persians, whom they considered barbarians. When the Greeks finally succeeded in halting the onslaught of their foes from the East, they embarked on an age of great prosperity, known as the High Classical period, which lasted from about 450 to 400 B.C. During this time, the humanistic tendencies of the Greeks came to fruition, and were expressed in all media. The core principle and aesthetic tenet of the time are best summed up by the Greek philosopher Protagoras (c. 485-410 B.C.), who said, “Man is the measure of all things.” This interest in humanity, this confidence in human capabilities, is probably best seen, as far as the visual arts are concerned, in Greek sculpture and architecture; it was at this time that the Parthenon was rebuilt, under the famous Athenian statesman Pericles, and decorated with some of the best examples of High Classical sculpture.
Niobid Painter. Apollo and Artemis Slaying the Chilldren of Niobe. c. 455-450 B.C.
Attic red-figure calyx-krater from Orvieto. Height: apporx. 21″ (53cm). Musee du Louvre, Paris
In Greek mythology, Niobe was the granddaughter of Zeus, ruler of the gods. After boasting about the number of children she had (seven sons and seven daughters) in comparison to the goddess Leto, Niobe was punished for her hubris by Apollo and Artemis, the two offspring of Leto, who slaughtered all Niobe’s offspring. The red-figure technique was more conductive to the Classical Greek artist’s interest in realism, qualified by idealism, in the depiction of the human form. In portraying the nude figure of Apollo, the Niobid Painter has clearly delineated musculature. Despite the horror of the event, Apollo and Artemis have typically controlled, rational expressions on their faces - the essence of the Classical ideal
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