The technique is here different from that just described,
inasmuch as the design is painted in reddish brown upon a white
ground. The subject is the goddess Aphrodite, riding upon a goose.
The painter, some unnamed younger contemporary of Euphronius, has
learned a freer manner of drawing. He gives to the eye in profile
its proper form, and to the drapery a simple and natural fall. The
subject does not call, like the last, for dramatic vigor, and the
preeminent quality of the work is an exquisite purity and
refinement of spirit.
If we turn now from the humble art of vase-decoration to painting
in the higher sense of the term, the first eminent name to meet us
is that of Polygnotus, who was born on the island of Thasos near
the Thracian coast. His artistic career, or at least the later
part of it, fell in the "Transitional period" (480-450 B.C.), so
that he was a contemporary of the great sculptor Myron. He came to
Athens at some unknown date after the Persian invasion of Greece
(480 B.C.) and there executed a number of important paintings.
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