Nearly every figure finds an analogy in archaic sculpture :sx the artist is not copying statues ; but the perfect bearing of his men and women brings them into line with the kouroi and korai of sixth-century sculpture , or even more with the warriors or athletes on tall narrow sepulchral stelai .sx The artist is not interested in violent movement like his predecessors ; his people are trained to self-control ; their actions are measured and deliberate ; their attitudes have a special kind of grace , a kind of grace which among us is said to be extinct ; prim is not quite the adjective for it , convent-bred is the nearest I can get .sx Klitian man is all impulse and ardour :sx Exekian man reflects , and has character .sx Another masterpiece by Exekias , unsigned this time , is an amphora in Boulogne .sx The theme of the picture is the Death of Ajax , and the scene is well known from Sophoclean tragedy .sx I supplement the old unworthy reproduction by photographs .sx The death of Ajax is often represented in archaic art :sx Ajax either riving himself on his sword , or fallen about it .sx Exekias , and he alone , shows not the dead hero , nor the moment of his death ; but the preparation for the final act ; Ajax , his resolution taken , methodically fixing the sword in the ground .sx Behind him a palm-tree , in front of him his armour helmet , spears , the famous shield .sx The face is furrowed with grief .sx Composition , and details of drawing , recall the Ajax and Achilles of the Vatican :sx with a tragic note added rare in archaic art .sx Ajax here :sx Ajax and Achilles in the Vatican .sx Twice on a vase in Munich , once on a vase in Berlin , Exekias couples the same heroes ; shows Ajax bearing the dead body of Achilles to camp on his back .sx It is not a mere coincidence that there should be at least five pictures of Ajax in the extant work of Exekias .sx There was something in Exekias of Ajax :sx so that .sx he could admire and understand the hero slow , and strong , and at heart delicate .sx One other vase-picture has the same kind of feeling as the Death of Ajax :sx it is on an amphora in the Vatican .sx The dead warrior , the woman mourning , the armour , the trees ( pine and plane ) , the bird .sx The man may be Memnon , and Eos , the Dawn , his mother .sx Eos is usually winged , but Greek artists are ready to wing and unwing at need .sx Eos is often seen carrying Memnon away from the field in her arms :sx here not .sx But the names matter little :sx it is some unhappy mother of a noble son ; in a single Homeric word , .sx This vase is not by Exekias , though it stands close to him .sx Exekias did not restrict himself to vases , for Rumpf has shown that he is the painter of a wonderful series of clay plaques , now in Berlin , which must have originally decorated a tomb , for they show the body on the bier , the funeral procession , the last farewell to the dead , and the women sitting at home during the funeral with the infant heir .sx With the Amasis painter , as with Exekias , the question arises , was the painter responsible for the shape of the vase also , or rather for the total vase , compound of shape and decoration ?sx It seems likely , for the harmony is complete .sx The signature of Amasis occurs on eight vases , always in the form epoiesen :sx one artist , for safety called the Amasis painter , decorated all eight .sx He likes small vases , especially jugs of different shapes ; but his most important work is on amphorae and neck-amphorae .sx His amphora and .sx neck-amphora vary from the types used by Exekias , and are more or less peculiar to himself .sx In vase-shapes the main line of development runs through or from Exekias :sx Amasis is a by-path .sx And the same is true of Amasian drawing .sx He is a great contrast to Exekias :sx he is almost a pure formalist .sx An unsigned jug in the British Museum is typical of his normal manner :sx polished shape and drawing , simple , symmetrical composition .sx His master-piece is the admirable unsigned amphora in Berlin .sx On one side Achilles is receiving his new armour from his mother Thetis .sx The goddess and the young man beside her are particularly charming .sx No touch , here or elsewhere , of Exekian feeling ; and the drawing , for all its finish , is less sensitive than in Exekias .sx The liveliest of the Amasis painter's pictures are dionysiac .sx From the time of Klitias and earlier , the satyr is a beloved character in Greece .sx He plays hardly any part in Exekias , and one can under-stand it .sx The wine-god stirs the Amasis painter , and he forgets to be .sx On the back of the Berlin amphora , and in the little frieze above the obverse , instead of the usual standing or walking figures , satyrs embracing maenads skip gaily round their master ; and there is even more enthusiasm , though less charm , in another amphora , by the same hand , in Wurzburg , where the vintage is in full swing , and fat , hairy , willing satyrs pluck and tread the grapes .sx Companions of the Amasis painter carried formalism even farther .sx Chief of these is the anonymous artist .sx known as the Affected painter .sx His vases are superb in technique , refined in shape though less subtly proportioned than the Amasian :sx the pictures are decoration and nothing beyond ; the love of clear narrative , normal in archaic art , is wanting ; one can seldom tell what is going on :sx arrangements of well-dressed gentlemen , some with beard , others with clean faces .sx A comrade of his is the painter of a vase in Castle Ashby .sx These two painters are mannerists :sx at a time when painting is looking into the distance , aware of being on the brink of vast changes and adventures , they turn their backs on the future , cleave to the traditional style , and glory in just those features which were beginning to seem old-fashioned .sx The figures of Klitias were angular :sx but not compared to the youths on the Castle Ashby vase .sx `Elbows in' was the word with Exekias :sx here it is `Elbows out' .sx A similar movement may be traced later , at the end of the archaic period :sx the Pan painter and the red-figure mannerists correspond to the Amasis painter , the Affecter , and Elbows out .sx Whenever the names of Exekias and Amasis are mentioned , the name of a third potter , Nikosthenes , is apt to find a place beside them .sx He has left us over a hundred .sx vases with the signature Nikosthenes epoiesen :sx his favourite .sx shape is a variety of neck-amphora which is happily almost peculiar to himself .sx Nicosthenes has exercised a .sx the chiton came in :sx black-figure vase-painting clings to the traditional peplos , but no Attic vase with a woman's chiton can be earlier than the last quarter of the sixth century .sx The drawing of clothes apart from their fashion will place a vase before or after the forking of the way ; and naturally the drawing of the body as well .sx The relation of Exekias to the red-figure period is clear .sx He did not reach into it :sx but his follower , the Lysippides painter , did .sx This brings us to the earliest important group of vases that uses the red-figure technique .sx Some of these vases are red-figure all over ; others have one black-figure picture and one red-figure .sx The painter of the red-figure pictures is known as the Andocides painter , because four vases of the group bear the signature Andokides epoiesen , made by Andocides .sx Now in some at least of what are called the bilingual vases , the black-figure picture is by the Lysippides painter :sx it is quite possible that he and the Andocides painter are the same ; and that he was the inventor of the red-figure technique .sx In any case , the tradition of Exekias passes , through the Andocidean group , to the great masters of early red-figure , Euphronios and Euthymides .sx Two of the vases which bear the signature of Andocides are not by the same hand as the rest :sx a bilingual amphora in Madrid , a black-figured neck-amphora in Castle Ashby .sx By the same hand as these two is a red-figured amphora in Philadelphia with the signature of the potter Menon , and the painter is therefore known as the Menon painter .sx A delicate draughtsman , by nature a miniaturist , quite out- .sx side the Exekian tradition , nearer , but not connectible with , Amasis .sx His brother , to speak figuratively , the Antimenes painter , seems to have stuck to black-figure .sx ' His earlier works are contemporary with the early red-figure cups of Oltos or Epiktetos , and resemble them in the buoyant spirit and childlike guilelessness of the figures :sx his later are not uninfluenced by that new , starker , style to which we shall presently turn .sx He is a modest painter , and most of his work does not rise above the ordinary level of those standardized black-figured neck-amphorae and hydriai which were produced in great numbers during the last quarter of the sixth century and at the beginning of the fifth .sx But his best pieces have charm :sx so a hydria in Leyden , and a neck-amphora in the British Museum , `with their glimpses , such as Aristophanes gives' , in Clouds , or Peace , or Acharnians , `of carefree unselfconscious life in country or playing-field' .sx ' On the London vase , a man and boys are picking olives :sx a pretty contrast , I need not say to recent representations of labour , but to those pleasant Gothic miniatures or reliefs , in which the workers , with spindly legs and large lolling heads , squint seriocomically down at their spades or rakes .sx On the hydria in Leyden , boys washing themselves at the fountain :sx a Gothic counterpart to this scene I cannot on the spur of the moment recall .sx The last important group of black-figure vases is akin to the work of the great red-figure painters , Euphronios , Euthymides , and their followers :sx it might be called the Leagros group , from a love-name which it shares with red- .sx figure .sx In the last two or three decades of the sixth century , all black-figure painters are affected more or less deeply by the new artistic movement .sx Even if they do not interest them-selves in the detailed and systematic study of the athletic human body , or in that exploration of the third dimension which finds expression in bold foreshortenings and quasi-foreshortenings :sx yet a more complex treatment of drapery , an ampler , less constricted habit of body , a touch of brutality even , are signs of the times .sx The Amasis painter himself , in a late work like the Boston Herakles vase , is no longer the taintless exquisite we knew ; neither the Antimenes painter nor the Menon painter could escape ; and the Lysippides painter is the forerunner of the Leagros group .sx The best works of the Leagros group are not equal to the masterpieces of Euphronios and Euthymides .sx But the composition is bold , and many of the figures have a force and intensity which make one think of Acropolis 606 .sx Perhaps the finest vase of the group is an amphora in Naples :sx ' in the rape of Antiope , queen of the Amazons , by Theseus and Peirithoos , the free attitudes and big gestures are a relief from the mincingness of much late black-figure :sx and the Dionysiac picture on the other side of the vase is a very great success .sx To the Amasis painter's treatment of the subject it stands as signature-scrawl to copperplate :sx but is none the worse for that :sx the god's ivy-branch , and the pine-branches of satyrs and maenads , blend with the figures into a masterly design ; and not only the branches , but the rippling lines of beard and hair , the wavy and crinkly lines of the chitons , are not decoration peppered on to the design , but parts of it .sx The same power of composition , and the same intensity of expression , in the heroes quarrelling doubtless in the charged atmosphere of the Achaean camp at Troy on a hydria in the British Museum .sx There is humour in .sx these artists as well as passion .sx The Acheloos painter he is related to the painter of the Naples amphora , and we know his satirical turn from other works of his contrasts , on the two sides of a pelike in London , natural man the satyr and his rude , impetuous courtship , with the humaner methods of civilization .sx