Now the materials and methods employed by the vase-
painters and the spaces at their disposal were very different from
those of mural or easel paintings. Consequently inferences must
not be hastily drawn from designs upon vases as to the composition
and coloring of the great masterpieces. But the best of the vase-
painters, especially in the early fifth century, were men of
remarkable talent, and all of them were influenced by the general
artistic tendencies of their respective periods. Their work,
therefore, contributes an important element to our knowledge of
Greek art history.
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.
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