Review Author(s): L. D. C. Review by: L. D. C. Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 40, Part 1 (1920), pp. 124-126 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/625434 Accessed: 26-06-2016 19:37 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, Cambridge University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 19:37:37 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms NOTICES OF BOOKS. Attic Red-Figured Vases in American Museums. By J. D. BEAZLEY. Pp. x + 236, 118 illustrations in text. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1918. This book is the result of a visit to the United States in the course of which the author was able to examine at first hand practically all the red-figured pottery in American Museums. He selects for discussion, or at least for mention, some four hundred pieces, about half of which are in Boston and a quarter in 1New York, while the rest are scattered through a dozen smaller collections belonging chiefly to universities and colleges. Considered merely as a report on vases in America, which, by reason of their location and the lack up to the present of adequate catalogues, have remained inaccessible to the majority of scholars, the book performs a service of very great value. But this report, which furnishes an excuse for the publication and justifies the title, is in reality only a by-product. The author's purpose in studying the vases was, as he tells us, 'to try to find out who painted each.' And, he continues, 'the greater number of the painters being both anonymous and hitherto unknown, I have been obliged to write down lists of their works whether preserved in Europe or in the United States.' Furthermore, 'Most, one might say, of the archaic, and many of the later painters in red-figure, are represented in America by one or more pieces. It follows that the vases mentioned in this book form no inconsiderable fraction of extant red-figured vases.' The book thus becomes a preliminary study for a complete history of Attic red-figured vase painting. The materials for such a history-the extant vases-might be compared to the pieces of a gigantic picture puzzle which has been in course of reconstruction during the last half- century. The main outlines of the picture had long been known; the majority of the pieces had been placed approximately where they belong; Mr. Beazley's predecessors, such as Klein, Hartwig, Furtwlangler, Hauser, had fitted many pieces together into groups based on potters' and painters' signatures, on KaXar names, and to a limited degree on style; Mr. Beazley himself had filled in large gaps by his identification of fourteen anonymous masters on purely stylistic grounds. Now, following the same method, he brings to light at one stroke no less than fifty more unknown painters, besides furnishing revised and augmented lists of the works of his fourteen anonyms, and much needed new arrangements of the groups previously put together. This is a sensational achieve- ment, and like all sudden steps forward in any branch of human knowledge it will doubtless not meet at first with universal acceptance. There will be talk about the impossibility of success in such an attempt, about the waste of time on microscopic researches which are not worth while, about faulty methods. The only test of a method, however, is the results achieved by following it. And those to whom, thanks to the author's earlier studies, the style of some of the nameless masters who decorated large vases in the ripe archaic period has become as familiar as that of any of the traditional 'Big Four,' will follow with equal fascination and confidence the new trails which he has blazed. It must be admitted that the 'Morellian method' which he employs has its dangers, and it is a matter for congratulation that the ground has been so thoroughly 124 This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 19:37:37 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms NOTICES OF BOOKS 125 covered in the present book, leaving comparatively little to be gleaned by less competent investigators. That Mr. Beazley himself possesses the necessary qualifications-complete command of the vast literature, intimate first-hand acquaintance with a very large proportion of the extant vases, and a marvellously sensitive eye for detecting minute differences of style-is apparent on every page of the book. Whatever revisions of single attributions may be necessary, his main results will stand. And the way has been cleared for a complete history of this branch of Greek art, in which details can be subordinated and the important features of the picture receive their due emphasis. The book embraces the whole development of red-figured painting down to the close of the fifth century, but most of the space is fittingly devoted to the masters of the archaic style. In the chapters on the early archaic period the most intceresting figures are Oltos, who appears in quite a new light with fifty-two vases to his credit, and ' the dainty Epiktetos' of whom the author pithily remarks : 'You cannot draw better, you can only draw differently.' Hartwig's Chachrylion vanishes: the vases from the pottery owned by him are divided among three painters. Similarly 'the style of Pamphaios' is shown to be a meaningless phrase : there are vases from his factory which bear the signature of Epiktetos as painter ; others are by Oltos; still others are from the hand of a nameless artist who worked for Nikosthenes as well. By distinguishing the different styles, and by collecting the works of the anonymous artist whom he calls after his masterpiece 'the painter of the London Sleep and Death,' Mr. Beazley brings order out of chaos. A brief chapter is devoted to the painters Euphronios, Phintias and Euthymides, who are ill represented in America. The Euphronian problem would demand a book by itself. Mr. Beazley in addition to his attributions of fourteen vases to Euphronios states what pieces he would assign to the 'Panaitios Master ' evolved by Furtwiingler, and distinguishes from these the works of [Ones]imos whom he regards provisionally as a separate artist. The former is admirably represented in America by ten vases out of a total of thirty-two, eight being in Boston. In the same collection are also some fine examples of the work of the Brygos painter, to whom seventy vases are given. Two imitators of the latter, the 'Berlin Foundry Painter' (Hartwig's 'Diogenes Master') and the 'Painter of the Paris Gigantomachy' are clearly differentiated from their master and from one another. The author's important contributions to our knowledge of the painters of large vases in the ripe archaic period are familiar to readers of this Journal. The works of the Berlin painter are brought up to ninety-nine, those of the Kleophrades painter-' who may be said to play a kind of Florentine to the Berlin painter's Sienese,' and who, 'for the giant power of his standing or moving figures has not quite his equal among vase painters '-now number about fifty; those of the Pan painter are increased to fifty-three. Some new painters of this class make their ddbut in the present book, one of the most interesting being the 'Flying Angel painter,' so called after his picture of a silen holding his small son on his shoulder, on an amphora in Boston. Furtwangler's 'Penthesilea Master,' a painter of strong individuality but of very uneven merit, is represented in America by two or three excellent pieces and by many others which 'present a dreary spectacle of talent commercialized.' It is interesting to note that these American examples were studied independently by Miss Swindler and by Mr. Beazley, and that their lists agreed very closely. A similar coincidence occurred in the case of the Villa Giulia painter, Frickenhaus in his Lenrienvasen ascribing to one hand fifteen vases, thirteen of which Mr. Beazley included in his list. The period of the developed free style produced one painter of the first rank--the Achilles Master, whose works in red-figured and in poly- chrome technique Mr. Beazley has already collected in an article in this Journal. From this time on the art rapidly degenerates, the monotony being relieved occasionally by such figures as the 'Painter of the Boston Phiale,' the 'Lykaon Painter,' and the 'Kleophon Painter,' until the line which began with Andokides dies out ingloriously with Meidias. It is a remarkable thing that a book composed largely of lists which are intended for the specialist should make such interesting reading. One hesitates between admiration of its brevity and regret that the author has not given us more of his happy characterizations This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 19:37:37 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 126 NOTICES OF BOOKS of the various artists and more longer passages such as that in which the innovations brought in by Euphronios, Phintias and Euthymides in the rendering of the human form are described (p.