Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Some tanning and marking due to age. Year 1955. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> For the rest this little book makes no scientific pretensions. It is intended neither as a guide to the study of vases nor as a history of Greek painting. It is what its title denotes a collection though not an arbitrary one of masterpieces of Greek painting and drawing (any one who cares may call the Pompeian wall-paintings Roman as long as he realises that the art of the Imperial age is the last phase of Hellenistic art). The chief object of the text is to answer such questions as the pictures naturally suggest to the lover of the arts: this involves at least an indication of the chief connexions. General features requiring explanation are discussed at their first appearance in our selection of pictures. Those who wish to know more will find it easily in my large work where I have kept the main text as free as possible from archaeological ballast. For vase-painting many readers will have by them Buschor’s admirable book which has appeared both in German and in English. There are still a few observations to make about the reproductions. In drawings after vases it is customary to indicate the purple details of the original by a grey tone. Plate 4 gives a good example of the way in which the picture-bands running round the curved surface of a vase are rolled and flattened out in the reproduction. The circular pictures are sometimes from plates but usually from drinking-cups in which they seldom cover the whole surface of the interior. They are framed at first by narrow lines later by bands of maeander. These borders are usually cut off square in my reproductions and sometimes even omitted to avoid excessive reduction of the pictures themselves this makeshift un- avoidable in my large book must be tolerated here also and excused by the conditions of our time. Other matters will explain themselves. When the references in the margin of the text are bracketed it means that the pictures are mentioned at this point but not described at length. (MP)