admitted Greek motifs; gradually the jewellery of Attica and Crete geometricized its shapes and patterns; gradually eastern
techniques and patterns were admitted to native forms, while eastern subjects were Hellenized, like the naked ivory goddess
(Astarte) who in Attica acquired a meander-patterned cap and a trim Greek physique.
The gifts of the East to the Greek artist were manifold. The mere example of an art devoted to figure and animal decoration
may have encouraged him to develop figure decoration in his native, Geometric idiom, though even these angular forms
were by no means alien to eastern arts. The incised eastern bronzes and ivories showed how detail could be added to
silhouette figures, bringing the possibility of closer definition of dress and action, and eventually differentiation of the
figures which went beyond differentiation of sex. In vase-painting this produced the incising miniaturist black-figure
technique of Corinth by the end of the eighth century, but some studios, in Attica and the islands, clung to larger outline-
drawn figures with linear details, products mainly of the seventh century.
The animals and animal-frieze decoration of the easterners were not unfamiliar to the Greeks, and in some centres they
became dominant at the expense of human figure or abstract decoration. Animal friezes long remained a hallmark of the
orientalizing style, even long after their source was forgotten. The creatures patrol Corinthian, later Attic, and east-Greek
vases well into the sixth century. The wildlife was not unfamiliar, either, but some had slipped from the repertory since the
Bronze Age. Lions were not to be seen in mainland Greece, except perhaps in the very north, and could be treated as
monsters, like sphinxes or griffins, both well known to Bronze Age Greek artists. A Greek hybrid too, the centaur, could be
added, and new monsters for myth created from eastern models-the chimaera, the Gorgon-to depict creatures of sung story
who had no image.
Where the Greek preferred Geometric friezes or panels the East had curvilinear or floral patterns. This new, rank growth
never quite ousted the Geometric, and was itself subjected to Greek discipline through the seventh century until the friezes
of lotus and palmette, overlapping leaves (becoming egg and dart) and cable, became an integral part of Greek Classical
design at any scale, from jewellery to temple architecture. More importantly, new techniques allowed action scenes of
narrative to be created which could depict more than mortal rituals or adventures, and they opened the way to pictorial
narrative of myth.
Orientalizing stimuli continued with distinctive, if diminishing, effect through the seventh and sixth centuries, the role of
the Phoenicians and what they carried from further east being taken over by the example of Egyptian, Assyrian,
Babylonian, and Persian arts. They sometimes led nowhere or served to stereotype rather than quicken new forms, but they
were more than mere catalysts, and in this formative period the coherent and natural characteristics of Greek art are
demonstrated most clearly by what their artists chose and what they rejected in the many new models, techniques, and
materials with which they became familiar.
The Archaic Style
Archaism in Greek art ran to the early fifth century. Down to that time its course was swift but, except in some exploitation
of unusual media, such as vase-painting and architectural sculpture, it was not very dissimilar to that of other cultures, and it
held little obvious promise of what was to follow. With hindsight we may try to claim the inevitability of the revolution
which the fifth century ushered in. The seeds were there, but so were they in the arts of the Assyrians and Egyptians. In
other arts the Greeks had already explored new fields in narrative and lyric. The artist, it may be, lagged behind the poet and
philosopher, but was inspired by the same spirit of enquiry, and whether his dismantling of Archaic convention was
inevitable or accidental, it was clearly something that is less surprising in Greece than it would have been elsewhere in the
ancient world.
Archaic Greek art was highly conventionalized, and most of its conventions depended in varying degrees on foreign arts. It
is generally in these strictly orientalizing essays that progress was slowest and the incentive to change least urgent. One
example is metal-work: the type of full-rounded Eastern cauldron, with cast animal attachments, had a longer vogue than its
Geometric predecessors, the big tripod cauldrons (yet it was the Geometric shape that survived in Greece for prestigious
votive offerings or prizes). The griffin heads that decorated many of the cauldrons, which became favourite dedications at