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JANE ELLEN HARRISON.
DOURIS AND THE PAINTERS
OF GREEK VASES
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CHAPTER I
HOW DESIGNS ON VASES REPRESENT THE HISTORY OF GREEK PAINTING
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This book has not been written for the professional archæologist. While speaking of Douris, we propose to give the reading public an idea of the chief characteristics of Greek painting.
It may be asked why the title of this little book is not Polygnotos or Parrhasios. As we are treating of ancient painting, why not choose as a study one of these famous men, whose works give to the art of his time its distinctive character?
The answer is simple. Not a single painting is preserved by the masters who, with the sculptors Phidias, Polykleitos, Praxiteles, and Lysippos, made the ages of Pericles and Alexander illustrious. Not a fragment of their paintings nor a piece of their frescoes has escaped destruction. Unfortunate chance has thus kept the most glorious period of Greek painting hidden from our view. Recent discoveries in Mycenæ, Tiryns, Crete, and Melos have revealed astonishing works of the pre-Hellenic age, and they have restored to us frescoes contemporary with Minos and Agamemnon. And for more than a century the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum have made known all the details of the decoration of Roman houses at the time of Augustus and Titus. But between these two periods—separated by fifteen or twenty centuries—all is obscurity,—a dark gap which a few marble panels in the museum of Athens are quite insufficient to cover. These pale remnants of funereal monuments from the Kerameikos, frescoes painted on marble, reproduced the life and likeness of the departed.