Basically, what these depictions of the blinding of Polyphemus prove is that it's hard to paint a cyclops from the side. Representing the physical world in two dimensions, like impersonating Christopher Walken, is something we can only to do it once we've seen how someone else does it, and at the time these vases were painted, 27 hundred odd years ago, clearly nobody had yet drawn someone from the front. I'd love to know what anxiety, if any, was felt by the artists who had to depict a famously one-eyed creature under these restrictions. Once the first Cyclops had been attempted, was the heat off, the precedent set? I can't find out which of these vases was the first though, nor whether the artists had seen each other's work, or simply decided independently to stop bothering.
But hang on...
I've just remembered Gorgoneia:
Gorgons were painted face on! And they date from as far back as the vases! So artists did know how to paint a face from the front. But only if it belonged to a gorgon? How did that work? And is this actually a face seen from the front? Or is it...? Let me just cover up one half with my hand... Is it just two profiles stuck together?
I wonder if the ancient Greeks had fun making these with a mirror.
I wonder if they had mirrors.
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