Cycladic Vase-painting of the Seventh Century

Abstract

An inquiry into the classification of the various Island fabrics of the seventh century is accompanied by many difficulties, some of which are the peculiar inheritance of the subject. Not only was much of the material discovered without grouping or stratification in the Catharsis grave at Rheneia; the very fact of the original provenance of these vases from Delos at once deprives the circumstances of their discovery of much of its a priori significance. Further, by far the greater part of the material, from Rheneia remains unpublished; and, lastly, there will always be the difficulty, often amounting to impossibility, of classifying some of the fabrics at all without examining the vases in the hand—a process which involves a visit to several comparatively inaccessible places. The result of these various and partially inevitable causes is a misfortune, inasmuch as Cycladic vase-painting, despite many borrowings, possesses a definite and often very interesting individuality of its own. Of this the published finds have for some years given us a simple and fairly intelligible picture, a chiaroscuro effect, one might say, in which the central figures appeared clearly, if not sharply, grouped against the background. Gradually, however, as our knowledge and materials increase, it appears that the straight-forwardness of the picture was in some measure deceptive. In reality the subject is beset by complications, and there is, unfortunately, much for the chilly work of analysis to do before we can hope to appreciate for its own sake what the various schools of Island painting have to offer, or to understand their point of view in relation to that of their contemporaries in Crete, in Ionia and on the mainland of Greece. Accordingly, the appearance of a work containing much new material was a very welcome event. In Professor Dugas' book the subject receives its first specialised treatment, but his classification presents one or two difficulties, and the notes which follow have been put together as an alternative solution of the problems, independently arrived at.