Having touched in Chapter II. upon the earlier styles of Greek pottery, I begin here with a vase of Attic manufacture, decorated, as an inscription on it shows, by Clitias, but commonly called from its finder the Francois vase (Fig. 188).  It may be assigned to the first half of the sixth century, and probably to somewhere near the beginning of that period.  It is an early specimen of the class of black-figured vases, as they are called.  The propriety of the name is obvious from the illustration.  The objects represented were painted in black varnish upon the reddish clay, and the vase was then fired.  Subsequently anatomical details, patterns of garments, and so on were indicated by means of lines cut through the varnish with a sharp instrument.  Moreover, the exposed parts of the female figures—­faces, hands, arms, and feet—­were covered with white paint, this being the regular method in the black-figured style of distinguishing the flesh of female from that of male figures.

The decoration of the Francois vase is arranged in horizontal bands or zones.  The subjects are almost wholly legendary and the vase is therefore a perfect mine of information for the student of Greek mythology.  Our present interest, however, is rather in the character of the drawing.  This may be better judged from Fig. 189, which is taken from the zone encircling the middle of the vase.  The subject is the wedding of the mortal, Peleus, to the sea-goddess, Thetis, the wedding whose issue was Achilles, the great hero of the Iliad.  To this ceremony came gods and goddesses and other supernatural beings.  Our illustration shows Dionysus (Bacchus), god of wine, with a wine-jar on his shoulder and what is meant for a vine-branch above him.  Behind him walk three female figures, who are the personified Seasons.  Last comes a group consisting of two Muses and a four-horse chariot bearing Zeus, the chief of the gods, and Hera, his wife.  The principle of isocephaly is observed on the vase as in a frieze of relief-sculpture (page 145).  The figures are almost all drawn in profile, though the body is often shown more nearly from the front, e.g., in the case of the Seasons, and the eyes are always drawn as in front view.  Out of the great multitude of figures on the vase there are only four in which the artist has shown the full face.  Two of these are intentionally ugly Gorgons on the handles; the two others come within the limits of our specimen illustration.  If Dionysus here appears almost like a caricature, that is only because the decorator is so little accustomed to drawing the face in front view.  There are other interesting analogies between the designs on the vase and contemporary reliefs.  For example, the bodies, when not disguised by garments, show an unnatural smallness at the waist, the feet of walking figures are planted flat on the ground, and there are cases in which the body and neck are so twisted that the face is turned in exactly the opposite direction to the feet.  On the whole, Clitias shows rather more skill than a contemporary sculptor, probably because of the two arts that of the vase-painter had been the longer cultivated.