Chapter XVI
.); and the robes of Persephone, though simpler in decoration, show an even greater richness of treatment in the delicate lines of the chiton and the graceful fall of the mantle. On a cup in Berlin with the Judgment of Paris (Fig. 129) he makes a notable attempt at landscape, showing Paris seated on a rock, surrounded by a flock of goats.
=Brygos= has only left eight cups, but they are on the whole of a high order of merit. The Acropolis excavations yielded a fragment of his work, showing that the beginning of his career must be placed before 480 B.C. But although he retains some archaisms from his early training, he stands, as Murray has pointed out, on the threshold of the fine style, and in some of his compositions there is a distinctly pictorial tendency. His use of gilding (as on E 65 in B.M.) is also, as with Euphronios in his polychrome cup, an evidence of advanced work. He shows in his work more directness and actuality, as compared with the stateliness and grace of Hieron and Makron, and the infusion of earnestness and animation into his figures is a typical characteristic.[1359] He pays more attention to his compositions than to his single figures, but lacks the rhythm of Euphronios.
His subjects are very varied, and cover almost all the vase-painters' ground except the palaestra. Hartwig on this account connects him with the school of Oltos, Hieron, and Peithinos, who preferred erotic and Dionysiac to athletic subjects, and points out that his use of bold foreshortening effects need not connote the direct influence of Euphronios, inasmuch as κατάγραφα were by this time the common property of vase- painters. It is interesting to note that he uses no καλός-name, and both he and Hieron seem to belong to a time when this fashion was dying out; by the end of the “strong” period it had practically disappeared.
To speak of his vases in detail, the British Museum cup has been praised for the composition and drawing of its exterior designs and its clever foreshortening. The exterior subject is interesting as being derived from a Satyric drama. The difference of scale between the figures of deities and those of the Satyrs reminds us (though there is of course no question of influence) of the similar treatment of the east frieze of the Parthenon. It has been suggested by several writers that the name Brygos implies a Macedonian origin for this painter, and on these grounds a kylix in the British Museum (E 68) has been attributed to him which bears inscriptions in the Macedonian or some kindred dialect—Pilon for Philon, Pilipos for Philippos (see