The black-figured ware continued to be produced in Attica through the sixth century and on into the fifth.  Fig. 190 gives a specimen of the work of an interesting vase-painter in this style, Execias by name, who probably belongs about the middle of the sixth century.  The subject is Achilles slaying in battle the Amazon queen, Penthesilea.  The drawing of Execias is distinguished by an altogether unusual care and minuteness of detail, and if the whole body of his work, as known to us from several signed vases, could be here presented, it would be easily seen that his proficiency was well in advance of that of Clitias.  Obvious archaisms, however, remain.  Especially noticeable is the unnatural twisting of the bodies.  A minor point of interest is afforded by the Amazon’s shield, which the artist has not succeeded in rendering truthfully in side view.  That is a rather difficult problem in perspective, which was not solved until after many experiments.

Some time before the end of the sixth century, perhaps as early as 540, a new method of decorating pottery was invented in Attica.  The principal coloring matter used continued to be the lustrous black varnish; but instead of filling in the outlines of the figures with black, the decorator, after outlining the figures by means of a broad stroke of the brush, covered with black the spaces between the figures, leaving the figures themselves in the color of the clay.  Vases thus decorated are called “red-figured.”  In this style incised lines ceased to be used, and details were rendered chiefly by means of the black varnish or, for certain purposes, of the same material diluted till it became of a reddish hue.  The red-figured and black-figured styles coexisted for perhaps half a century, but the new style ultimately drove the old one out of the market.

The development of the new style was achieved by men of talent, several of whom fairly deserve to be called artists.  Such an one was Euphronius, whose long career as a potter covered some fifty years, beginning at the beginning of the fifth century or a little earlier.  Fig. 191 gives the design upon the outside of a cylix (a broad, shallow cup, shaped like a large saucer, with two handles and a foot), which bears his signature.  Its date is about 480, and it is thus approximately contemporary with the latest of the archaic statues of the Athenian Acropolis (pages 151 f.).  On one side we have one of the old stock subjects of the vase-painters, treated with unapproached vivacity and humor.  Among the labors of Heracles, imposed upon him by his taskmaster, Eurystheus, was the capturing of a certain destructive wild boar of Arcadia and the bringing of the creature alive to Mycenae.  In the picture, Heracles is returning with the squealing boar on his shoulder.  The cowardly Eurystheus has taken refuge in a huge earthenware jar sunk in the ground, but Heracles, pretending to be unaware of this fact, makes as though he would deposit his burden in the jar.  The agitated man