as,
for instance, in the number of bystanders; and it is almost an
impossibility to find any two vase-paintings which are exact duplicates.
The form of the composition, was partly determined by the field
available for the design; when this took the form of a long frieze the
space was filled up with a series of spectators or the repetition of
typical groups, but when the design is on a framed panel or confined by
ornamental borders the method of treatment is adapted from that of a
sculptured metope, and the figures limited to two or three. In many
cases it is difficult to decide, in the absence of inscriptions, whether
or no a scene has mythological signification; the mythological types are
over and over again adopted for scenes of ordinary life, even to the
divine attributes or poses of certain figures.

[Illustration: Vase by Andocides. Black figures on obverse.

Vase by Andocides. Red figures on reverse.

FIG. 27.]

Among the artists of the period who have left their names on the vases,
besides those already mentioned, the most conspicuous is Nicosthenes, a
potter of some originality, from whose hand we have over seventy
examples, a few being in the red-figure method. He is supposed to have
introduced at Athens a revival of the Ionic fashion of painting on a
cream-coloured ground instead of on red, of which some very effective
examples have been preserved. He was always a potter rather than a
painter, and most of his vases are remarkable for their
forms--introducing plastic imitations of metal vases--rather than for
their painted decoration. Most of the artists of this period, as in the
succeeding one, have left their signatures on cups (_kylikes_), but this
form did not receive so much attention from the painter as at a later
period, and many of these examples bear only inscriptions and no painted
decoration.

III. _Red-figured Vases._--The sudden reversal of technical method
involved in the change from black figures on a red ground to red figures
on black is not at first sight easy of explanation. Some artists, like
Nicosthenes and Andocides, used both methods, sometimes on the same
vase, and there is no doubt that the two went on for some years
concurrently. As, however, no intermediate stage is possible, there is
no question of development or transition. The new style was in fact a
bold and ingenious innovation. It may possibly have been suggested by a
small class of vases in which the figures are painted i