Museum of Antiquity Part 40

_Yellow._--Yellow-ochre, hydrated peroxide of iron, the _sil_ of the Romans, formed the base of many other yellows, mixed with various colors and carbonate of lime. Ochre was procured from different parts--the Attic was considered the best; sometimes the paler sort of sandaracha was used for yellow.

_Green._--Chrysocolla, which appears to have been green carbonate of copper, or malachite (green verditer), was the green most approved of by the ancients; there was also an artificial kind which was made from clay impregnated with sulphate of copper (blue vitriol) rendered green by a yellow dye. The commonest and cheapest colors were the Appianum, which was a clay, and the creta viridis, the common green earth of Verona.

_Blue._--The ancient blues were very numerous; the princ.i.p.al of these was cruleum, azure, a species of verditer, or blue carbonate of copper, of which there were many varieties. The Alexandrian was the most valued, as approaching the nearest to ultramarine. It was also manufactured at Pozzuoli. This imitation was called clon. Armenium was a metallic color, and was prepared by being ground to an impalpable powder. It was of a light blue color. It has been conjectured that ultramarine (lapis lazuli) was known to the ancients under the name of Armenium, from Armenia, whence it was procured. It is evident, however, from Pliny's description, that the "sapphirus" of the ancients was the lapis lazuli of the present day. It came from Media.

Indigo, indic.u.m, was well known to the ancients.

_Purple._--The ancients had several kinds of purple, purpurissimum, ostrum, hysginum, and various compound colors. Purpurissimum was made from creta argentaria, a fine chalk or clay, steeped in a purple dye, obtained from the murex. In color it ranged between minium and blue, and included every degree in the scale of purple shades. The best sort came from Pozzuoli. Purpurissimum indic.u.m was brought from India. It was of a deep blue, and probably was the same as indigo. Ostrum was a liquid color, to which the proper consistence was given by adding honey. It was produced from the secretion of a fish called ostrum, and differed in tint according to the country from whence it came; being deeper and more violet when brought from the northern, redder when from the southern coasts of the Mediterranean. The Roman ostrum was a compound of red ochre and blue oxide of copper. Hysginum, according to Vitruvius, is a color between scarlet and purple. The celebrated Tyrian dye was a dark, rich purple, of the color of coagulated blood, but, when held against the light, showed a crimson hue. It was produced by a combination of the secretions of the murex and buccinum.

In preparing the dye the buccinum was used last, the dye of the murex being necessary to render the colors fast, while the buccinum enlivened by its tint of red the dark hue of the murex. Sir H. Davy, on examining a rose-colored substance, found in the baths of t.i.tus, which in its interior had a l.u.s.tre approaching to that of carmine, considered it a specimen of the best Tyrian purple. The purpura, as mentioned in Pliny, was an amethyst or violet color.

_Brown._--Ochra usta, burnt ochre.--The browns were ochres calcined, oxides of iron and manganese, and compounds of ochres and blacks.

_Black._--Atramentum, or black, was of two sorts, natural and artificial. The natural was made from a black earth, or from the secretion of the cuttle-fish, sepia. The artificial was made of the dregs of wine carbonized, calcined ivory, or lamp-black. The atramentum indic.u.m, mentioned by Pliny, was probably the Chinese Indian ink.

_White._--The ordinary Greek white was melinum, an earth from the Isle of Melos; for fresco-painting the best was the African partonium.

There was also a white earth of Eretria and the annularian white.

Carbonate of lead, or white lead, cerussa, was apparently not much used by the ancient painters. It has not been found in any of the remains of painting in Roman ruins.

_Methods of Painting._--There were two distinct cla.s.ses of painting practiced by the ancients--in water colors and in wax, both of which were practiced in various ways. Of the former the princ.i.p.al were fresco, al fresco; and the various kinds of distemper (a tempera), with glue, with the white of egg, or with gums (a guazzo); and with wax or resins when these were rendered by any means vehicles that could be worked with water. Of the latter the princ.i.p.al was through fire, termed encaustic.

Fresco was probably little employed by the ancients for works of imitative art, but it appears to have been the ordinary method of simply coloring walls, especially amongst the Romans. Coloring al fresco, in which the colors were mixed simply in water, as the term implies, was applied when the composition of the stucco on the walls was still wet (udo tectorio), and on that account was limited to certain colors, for no colors except earths can be employed in this way.

The fresco walls, when painted, were covered with an encaustic varnish, both to heighten the colors and to preserve them from the injurious effects of the sun or the weather. Vitruvius describes the process as a Greek practice. When the wall was colored and dry, Punic wax, melted and tempered with a little oil, was rubbed over it with a hard brush (seta); this was made smooth and even by applying a _cauterium_ or an iron pan, filled with live coals, over the surface, as near to it as was just necessary to melt the wax; it was then rubbed with a candle (wax) and a clean cloth. In encaustic painting the wax colors were _burnt into_ the ground by means of a hot iron (called cauterium) or pan of hot coals being held near the surface of the picture. The mere process of burning in const.i.tutes the whole difference between encaustic and the ordinary method of painting with wax colors.

We shall now say a few words with regard to the much canva.s.sed question of painting or coloring statues. Its antiquity and universality admit of no doubt. Indeed, the practice of painting statues is a characteristic of a primitive and workmanship of clay or wood. It was a survival of the old religious practices of daubing the early statues of the G.o.ds with vermilion, and was done to meet the superst.i.tious tastes of the uneducated. Statues for religious purposes may have been painted in obedience to a formula prescribed by religion, but statues as objects of art, on which the sculptor exhibited all his genius and taste, were unquestionably executed in the pure and uncolored marble alone. In the chryselephantine, or ivory statues of Jove and Minerva, by Phidias, art was made a handmaid to religion. Phidias himself would have preferred to have executed them in marble.

We may further remark that form, in its purest ideal, being the chief aim of sculpture, any application of color, which would detract from the purity and ideality of this purest of the arts, could never be agreeable to refined taste. Coloring sculpture and giving it a life-like reality is manifestly trenching on the province of painting, and so departing from the true principle of sculpture, which is to give form in its most perfect and idealized development. We must also consider that sculpture in marble, by its whiteness, is calculated for the display of light and shade. For this reason statues and bas-reliefs were placed either in the open light to receive the direct rays of the sun, or in underground places, or thermae, where they received their light either from an upper window, or, by night, from the strong light of a lamp, the sculptor having for that purpose studied the effects of the shadows. It must also be remembered that the statues in Greek and Roman temples received their light from the upper part of the building, many of the temples being hypaethral, thus having the benefit of a top light, the sculptor's chief aim. Color in these statues or bas-reliefs would have tended to mar the contrasts of light and shade, and blended them too much; for example, color a photograph of a statue, which exhibits a marked contrast of light and shade, and it will tend to confuse and blend the two. The taste for polychrome sculpture in the period of the decline of art was obviously but a returning to the primitive imperfection of art, when an attempt was made to produce illusion in order to please the uneducated taste of the vulgar.

The Romans derived their knowledge of painting from the Etruscans, their ancestors and neighbors; the first Grecian painters who came to Italy are said to have been brought over by Demaratus, the father of Tarquinius Priscus, King of Rome; at all events Etruria appears to have exercised extensive influence over the arts of Rome during the reign of the Tarquins. Tradition attributes to them the first works which were used to adorn the temples of Rome, and, according to Pliny, not much consideration was bestowed either on the arts or on the artists. Fabius, the first among the Romans, had some painting executed in the temple of Salus, from which he received the name of Pictor. The works of art brought from Corinth by Mummius, from Athens by Sulla, and from Syracuse by Marcellus, introduced a taste for paintings and statues in their public buildings, which eventually became an absorbing pa.s.sion with many distinguished Romans. Towards the end of the republic Rome was full of painters. Julius Caesar, Agrippa, Augustus, were among the earliest great patrons of artists.

Suetonius informs us that Caesar expended great sums in the purchase of pictures by the old masters. Under Augustus, Marcus Ludius painted marine subjects, landscape decorations, and historic landscape as ornamentation for the apartments of villas and country houses. He invented that style of decoration which we now call arabesque or grotesque. It spread rapidly, insomuch that the baths of t.i.tus and Livia, the remains discovered at c.u.mae, Pozzuoli, Herculaneum, Stabiae, Pompeii, in short, whatever buildings about that date have been found in good preservation, afford numerous and beautiful examples of it. At this time, also, a pa.s.sion for portrait painting prevailed; an art which flattered their vanity was more suited to the tastes of the Romans than the art which could produce beautiful and refined works similar to those of Greece. Portraits must have been exceedingly numerous; Varro made a collection of the portraits of 700 eminent men.

Portraits, decorative and scene painting, seem to have engrossed the art. The example, or rather the pretensions, of Nero must also have contributed to encourage painting in Rome; but Roman artists were, however, but few in number; the victories of the consuls, and the rapine of the praetors, were sufficient to adorn Rome with all the master-pieces of Greece and Italy. They introduced the fashion of having a taste for the beautiful works of Greek art. At a later period, such was the corrupt state of taste, that painting was almost left to be practiced by slaves, and the painter was estimated by the quant.i.ty of work that he could do in a day.

The remains of painting found at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and in the baths of t.i.tus, at Rome, are the only paintings which can give us any idea of the coloring and painting of the ancients, which, though they exhibit many beauties, particularly in composition, are evidently the works of inferior artists in a period of decline. At Pompeii there is scarcely a house the walls of which are not decorated with fresco paintings. The smallest apartments were lined with stucco, painted in the most brilliant and endless variety of colors, in compartments simply tinted with a light ground, surrounded by an ornamental margin, and sometimes embellished with a single figure or subject in the center, or at equal distances. These paintings are very frequently historical or mythological, but embrace every variety of subject, some of the most exquisite beauty. Landscape painting was never a favorite with the ancients, and if ever introduced in a painting, was subordinate. The end and aim of painting among the ancients was to represent and ill.u.s.trate the myths of the G.o.ds, the deeds of heroes, and important historical events, hence giving all prominence to the delineation of the human form. Landscape, on the other hand, ill.u.s.trated nothing, represented no important event deserving of record, and was thus totally without significance in a Grecian temple or pinacotheca. In an age of decline, as at Pompeii, it was employed for mere decorative purposes. Many architectural subjects are continually found in which it is easy to trace the true principles of perspective, but they are rather indicated than minutely expressed or accurately displayed; whereas in most instances a total want of the knowledge of this art is but too evident. Greek artists seem to have been employed; indeed, native painters were few, while the former everywhere abounded, and their superiority in design must have always insured them the preference.

The subjects of Roman mural paintings are usually Greek myths; in the composition and style we see Greek conception, modified by Roman influence. The style of drawing is rather dexterous than masterly; rapidity of execution seems to be more prized than faithful, conscientious representation of the truth of nature; the drawing is generally careless, and effects are sometimes produced by tricks and expedients, which belong rather to scene-painting than to the higher branches of art. It must not, however, be forgotten that the majority of these pictures were architectural decorations, not meant to be regarded as independent compositions, but as parts of larger compositions, in which they were inserted as in a frame. As examples of ancient coloring they are of the highest interest, and much may be learnt from them in reference to the technical materials and processes employed by ancient artists.

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SCULPTURING.

We do not intend to enter here on the history of sculpture in all its phases, but to give the distinctive features which characterize the different styles of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sculpture, as they are visible in statues of the natural or colossal size, in statues of lesser proportion, and lastly in busts and bas-reliefs.

We shall give also the styles of each separate nation which prevailed at each distinct age or epoch, styles which mark the stages of the development of the art of sculpture in all countries. Sculpture, like architecture and painting, indeed all art, had an indigenous and independent evolution in all countries, all these arts springing up naturally, and taking their origin alike everywhere in the imitative faculty of man. They had their stages of development in the ascending and descending scales, their rise, progress, culminating point, decline and decay, their cycle of development; the sequence of these stages being necessarily developed wherever the spirit of art has arisen, and has had growth and progress. The first and most important step in examining a work of ancient sculpture is to distinguish with certainty whether it is of Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, or Roman workmanship; and this distinction rests entirely on a profound knowledge of the style peculiar to each of those nations. The next step is, from its characteristic features, to distinguish what period, epoch, or stage of the development of the art of that particular nation it belongs to. We shall further give the various attributes and characteristics of the G.o.ds, G.o.ddesses, and other mythological personages which distinguish the various statues visible in Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman sculpture.

This enumeration will be found of use in the many sculpture galleries of the various museums both at home and abroad.

Man _attempted_ sculpture long before he _studied_ architecture; a simple hut, or a rude house, answered every purpose as a place of abode, and a long time elapsed before he sought to invent what was not demanded by necessity.

Architecture is a creation of the mind; it has no model in nature, and it requires great imaginative powers to conceive its ideal beauties, to make a proper combination of parts, and to judge of the harmony of forms altogether new and beyond the reach of experience. But the desire in man to imitate and to record what has pa.s.sed before his eyes, in short, to transfer the impression from his own mind to another, is natural in every stage of society; and however imperfectly he may succeed in representing the objects themselves, his attempts to indicate their relative position, and to embody the expression of his own ideas, are a source of the highest satisfaction.

As the wish to record events gave the first, religion gave the second impulse to sculpture. The simple pillar of wood or stone, which was originally chosen to represent the deity, afterwards a.s.sumed the human form, the n.o.blest image of the power that created it; though the _Hermae_ of Greece were not, as some have thought, the origin of statues, but were borrowed from the mummy-shaped G.o.ds of Egypt.

Pausanias thinks that "all statues were in ancient times of wood, particularly those made in Egypt;" but this must have been at a period so remote as to be far beyond the known history of that country; though it is probable that when the arts were in their infancy the Egyptians were confined to statues of that kind; and they occasionally erected wooden figures in their temples, even till the times of the latter Pharaohs.

Long after men had attempted to make out the parts of the figure, statues continued to be very rude; the arms were placed directly down the side of the thighs, and the legs were united together; nor did they pa.s.s beyond this imperfect state in Greece, until the age of Daedalus. Fortunately for themselves and for the world, the Greeks were allowed to free themselves from old habits, while the Egyptians, at the latest periods, continued to follow the imperfect models of their early artists, and were forever prevented from arriving at excellence in sculpture; and though they made great progress in other branches of art, though they evinced considerable taste in the forms of their vases, their furniture, and even in some architectural details, they were forever deficient in ideal beauty, and in the mode of representing the natural positions of the human figure.

In Egypt the prescribed automaton character of the figures effectually prevented all advancement in the statuary's art; the limbs being straight, without any attempt at action, or, indeed, any indication of life; they were really _statues_ of the person they represented, not the person "living in marble," in which they differed entirely from those of Greece. No statue of a warrior was sculptured in the varied att.i.tudes of attack and defence; no wrestler, no _discobolus_, no pugilist exhibited the grace, the vigor, or the muscular action of a man; nor were the beauties, the feeling, and the elegance of female forms displayed in stone: all was made to conform to the same invariable model, which confined the human figure to a few conventional postures.

A sitting statue, whether of a man or woman, was represented with the hands placed upon the knees, or held across the breast; a kneeling figure sometimes supported a small shrine or sacred emblem; and when standing the arms were placed directly down the sides of the thighs, one foot (and that always the left) being advanced beyond the other, as if in the att.i.tude of walking, but without any attempt to separate the legs.

The oldest Egyptian sculptures on all large monuments were in low relief, and, as usual at every period, painted (obelisks and everything carved in hard stone, some funeral tablets, and other small objects, being in intaglio); and this style continued in vogue until the time of Remeses II., who introduced intaglio very generally on large monuments; and even his battle scenes at Karnac and the Memnonium are executed in this manner. The reliefs were little raised above the level of the wall; they had generally a flat surface with the edges softly rounded off, far surpa.s.sing the intaglio in effect; and it is to be regretted that the best epoch of art, when design and execution were in their zenith, should have abandoned a style so superior; which, too, would have improved in proportion to the advancement of that period.

After the accession of the twenty-sixth dynasty some attempt was made to revive the arts, which had been long neglected; and, independent of the patronage of government, the wealth of private individuals was liberally employed in their encouragement. Public buildings were erected in many parts of Egypt, and beautified with rich sculpture; the City of Sais, the royal residence of the Pharaohs of that dynasty, was adorned with the utmost magnificence, and extensive additions were made to the temples of Memphis, and even to those of the distant Thebes.

The fresh impulse thus given to art was not without effect; the sculptures of that period exhibit an elegance and beauty which might even induce some to consider them equal to the productions of an earlier age, and in the tombs of the a.s.saseef, at Thebes, are many admirable specimens of Egyptian art. To those, however, who understand the true feeling of this peculiar school, it is evident, that though in minuteness and finish they are deserving of the highest commendation, yet in grandeur of conception and in boldness of execution they fall far short of the sculptures of Sethos and the second Remeses.

The skill of the Egyptian artists in drawing bold and clear outlines is, perhaps, more worthy of admiration than anything connected with this branch of art, and in no place is the freedom of their drawing more conspicuous than in the figures in the unfinished part of Belzoni's tomb, at Thebes. It was in the drawing alone that they excelled, being totally ignorant of the correct mode of coloring a figure, and their painting was not an imitation of nature, but merely the harmonious combination of certain hues, which they well understood. Indeed, to this day the harmony of positive colors is thoroughly felt in Egypt and the East, and it is strange to find the little perception of it in Northern Europe, where theories take upon themselves to explain to the mind what the eye has not yet learned, as if a grammar could be written before the language is understood.

A remarkable feature of Egyptian sculpture is the frequent representation of their Kings in a colossal form. The two most famous colossi are the seated figures in the plain of Thebes. One is recognized to be the vocal Memnon (Amunoph III.) mentioned by Strabo.

They are forty-seven feet high, and measure about eighteen feet three inches across the shoulders. But the grandest and largest colossal statue was the stupendous statue of King Remeses II., a Syenite granite, in the Memnonium, at Thebes. It represented the King seated on a throne, in the usual att.i.tude of Kings, the hands resting on his knees. It is now in fragments. It measured twenty-two feet four inches across the shoulders. According to Sir G. Wilkinson, the whole ma.s.s, when entire, must have weighed about 887 tons. A colossal statue of Remeses II. lies with his face upon the ground on the site of Memphis; it was placed before the temple of Pthah. Its total height is estimated at forty-two feet eight inches, without the pedestal. It is of white siliceous limestone. Another well-known colossus is the statue of the so-called Memnon, now in the British Museum. It is supposed to be the statue of Remeses II. It was brought by Belzoni from the Memnonium, at Thebes.

In the different epochs of Egyptian sculpture, the Egyptian artists were bound by certain fixed canons or rules of proportion to guide them in their labors, and which they were obliged to adhere to rigidly. The following are the canons of three distinct epochs: 1. The canon of the time of the pyramids, the height was reckoned at six feet from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head, and subdivisions obtained by one-half or one-third of a foot. 2. The canon from the twelfth to the twenty-second dynasty is only an extension of the first. The whole figure was contained in a number of squares of half a foot, and the whole height divided into eighteen parts. In these two canons the height above the sixth foot is not reckoned. 3. The canon of the age of Psammetici, which is mentioned by Diodorus, reckoning the entire height at twenty-one and one-fourth feet from the sole to the crown of the head, taken to the upper part. The proportions are different, but without any introduction of the Greek canon. The canon and the leading lines were originally traced in red, subsequently corrected by the princ.i.p.al artist in black, and the design then executed. In Egypt, almost every object of sculpture and architecture was painted. The colossal Egyptian statues are generally of granite, basalt, porphyry, or sandstone. The two colossi on the plain of Thebes are, of course, hard gritstone. The Egyptians also worked in dark and red granites, breccias, serpentines, arragonite, limestones, jaspers, feldspar, cornelian, gla.s.s, gold, silver, bronze, lead, iron, the hard woods, fir or cedar, sycamore, ebony, acacia, porcelain and ivory, and terra cotta. All objects, from the most gigantic obelisk to the minute articles of private life, are found decorated with hieroglyphics.

Egyptian sculptors were also remarkable for the correct and excellent representation of animals. They may, indeed, be noticed in their representation a freedom of hand, a choice and variety of forms, a truthfulness, and even what deserves to be called imitation, which contrast with the uniformity, the rigidity, the absence of nature and life, which human figures present. Plato mentions a law which forbade the artists to depart, in the slightest degree, in the execution of statues of the human form from the type consecrated by priestly authority. The artist, therefore, not being restricted in his study of the animal form, could thus give to his image greater variety of motion, and by imitating animals in nature, indemnify himself for the constraint he experienced when he represented Kings and priests. The two colossal lions in red granite, brought to England by the late Duke of Northumberland, may be considered as remarkably good specimens of Egyptian art, as applied to the delineation of animal forms. They evince a considerable knowledge of anatomy in the strongly-marked delineation of the muscular development. The form also is natural and easy, thus admirably expressing the idea of strength in a state of repose. They were sculptured in the reign of Amunoph III. The representations of the sacred animals, the cynocephalus, the lion, the jackal, the ram, etc., are frequently to be met with in Egyptian sculpture.

_Greek._--The stages of the cycle of development of the art of sculpture in Greece may be given in five distinct periods or epochs, naming these, for greater convenience, chiefly from the name of the princ.i.p.al artist whose style prevailed at that period.

I. The Daedalean, or early ( -580 B.C.) II. The aeginetan, or archaic (580-480 B.C.) III. The Phidian, or the grand (480-400 B.C.) IV. The Praxitelean, or the beautiful (400-250 B.C.) V. The Decline (250- )

Prior to the age of Daedalus, there was an earlier stage in the development of art, in which the want of art, which is peculiar to that early stage, was exhibited in rude attempts at the representation of the human figure, for similar and almost identical rude representations are attempted in the early stages of art in all countries; as the early attempts of children are nearly identical in all ages. The presence of a G.o.d was indicated in a manner akin to the Fetichism of the African, by the simplest and most shapeless objects, such as unhewn blocks of stone and by simple pillars or pieces of wood. The first attempt at representation consisted in fashioning a block of stone or wood into some semblance of the human form, and this rude attempt const.i.tuted a divinity. Of this primitive form was the Venus of Cyprus, the Cupid of Thespiae; the Juno of Argos was fashioned in a similar rude manner from the trunk of a wild pear tree. These attempts were thus nothing more than shapeless blocks, the head, arms, and legs scarcely defined. Some of these wooden blocks are supposed to have been, in a coa.r.s.e attempt at imitation, furnished with real hair, and to have been clothed with real draperies in order to conceal the imperfection of the form. The next step was to give these shapeless blocks a human form. The upper part a.s.sumed the likeness of a head, and by degrees arms and legs were marked out; but in these early imitations of the human figure the arms were, doubtless, represented closely attached to the sides; and the legs, though to a certain extent defined, were still connected and united in a common pillar.

The age of Daedalus marks an improvement in the modeling of the human figure, and in giving it life and action. This improvement in the art consisted in representing the human figure with the arms isolated from the body, the legs detached, and the eyes open; in fine, giving it an appearance of nature as well as of life, and thus introducing a principle of imitation. This important progress in the practice of the art is the characteristic feature of the school of Daedalus, for under the name of Daedalus we must understand the art of sculpture itself in its primitive form, and in its first stage of development. According to Flaxman, the rude efforts of this age were intended to represent divinities and heroes only--Jupiter, Neptune, Hercules, and several heroic characters, had the self-same face, figure, and action; the same narrow eyes, thin lips, with the corners of the mouth turned upwards; the pointed chin, narrow loins, turgid muscles; the same advancing position of the lower limbs; the right hand raised beside the head, and the left extended. Their only distinctions were that Jupiter held the thunderbolt, Neptune the trident, and Hercules a palm branch or bow. The female divinities were clothed in draperies divided into few and perpendicular folds, their att.i.tudes advancing like those of the male figures. The hair of both male and female statues of this period is arranged with great care, collected in a club behind, sometimes entirely curled.

Between the rudeness of the Daedalean and the hard and severe style of the aeginetan there was a transitional style, to which period the artists Dipnus and Scyllis are a.s.signed by Pliny. The metopes of the temple of Selinus in Sicily, the bas-reliefs representing Agamemnon, Epeus, and Talthybius, in the Louvre, the Harpy monument in the British Museum, and the Apollo of Tenea, afford examples of this style.

_aeginetan._--In the aeginetan period of sculpture there was still retained in the character of the heads, in the details of the costume, and in the manner in which the beard and the hair are treated, something archaic and conventional, undoubtedly derived from the habits and teachings of the primitive school. But there prevails at the same time, in the execution of the human form, and the manner in which the nude is treated, a knowledge of anatomy, and an excellence of imitation carried to so high a degree of truth as to give convincing proofs of an advanced step and higher stage in the development of the art. The following are the princ.i.p.al characteristics of the aeginetan style, as derived from a careful examination of the statues found in aegina, which were the undoubted productions of the school of the aeginetan period. The style in which they are executed is called Hieratic, or Archaic.

The heads, either totally dest.i.tute of expression, or all reduced to a general and conventional expression, present, in the oblique position of the eyes and mouth, that forced smile which seems to have been the characteristic feature common to all productions of this archaic style; for we find it also on the most ancient medals, and on bas-reliefs of the primitive period.

The hair, treated likewise in a systematic manner in small curls or plaits, worked with wonderful industry, imitates not real hair, but genuine wigs, a peculiarity which may be remarked on other works in the ancient style, and of Etruscan origin. The beard is indicated on the cheek by a deep mark, and is rarely worked in relief, but, in the latter case, so as to imitate a false beard, and consequently in the same system as the hair. The costume partakes of the same conventional and hieratic taste; it consists of drapery, with straight and regular folds, falling in symmetrical and parallel ma.s.ses, so as to imitate the real draperies in which the ancient statues in wood were draped.

These conventional forms of the drapery and hair may, therefore, be considered as deriving their origin from an imitation of the early statues in wood, the first objects of worship and of art among the Greeks, which were frequently covered with false hair, and clothed with real draperies. The muscular development observable in these figures is somewhat exaggerated, but, considering the period, is wonderfully accurate and true to nature. The genius for imitation exhibited in this style, carried as far as it is possible in the expression of the forms of the body, although still accompanied by a little meagreness and dryness, the truth of detail, the exquisite care in the execution, evince so profound a knowledge of the structure of the human body, so great a readiness of hand--in a word, an imitation of nature so skillful, and, at the same time, so simple, that one can not but recognize in them the productions of an art which had arrived at a point which required only a few steps more to reach perfection.

To the latter part of this period belong the sculptors Canachus, Calamis, and Pythagoras. Canachus was the sculptor of a famous statue of a nude Apollo in bronze, termed Philesius, at Didymi, near Miletus, and was considered as very hard in his style.

_Phidian._--"This period (we here adopt Mr. Vaux's words) is the golden age of Greek art. During this period arose a spirit of sculpture which combined grace and majesty in the happiest manner, and by emanc.i.p.ating the plastic art from the fetters of antique stiffness, attained, under the direction of Pericles, and by the hand of Phidias, its culminating point. It is curious to remark the gradual progress of the arts; for it is clear that it was slowly and not _per saltum_ that the gravity of the elder school was changed to the perfect style of the age of Phidias." In this phase of the art, the ideal had reached its zenith, and we behold a beauty and perfection which has never been equaled. In this age alone sculpture, by the grandeur and sublimity it had attained to in its style, was qualified to give a form to the sublime conceptions of the deity evolved by the mind of Phidias. He alone was considered able to embody and to render manifest to the eye the sublime images of Homer. Hence, he was called "the sculptor of the G.o.ds." It is well known that in the conception of his Jupiter Olympus, Phidias wished to render manifest, and that he succeeded in realizing, the sublime image under which Homer represents the master of the G.o.ds.

The sculptor embodied that image in the following manner, according to Pausanias: "The G.o.d, made of ivory and gold, is seated on a throne, his head crowned with a branch of olive, his right hand presented a Victory of ivory and gold, with a crown and fillet; his left hand held a sceptre, studded with all kinds of metals, on which an eagle sat; the sandals of the G.o.d were gold, so was his drapery, on which were various animals, with flowers of all kinds, especially lilies; his throne was richly wrought with gold and precious stones. There were also statues; four Victories, alighting, were at each foot of the throne; those in front rested each on a sphinx that had seized a Theban youth; below the sphinxes the children of Niobe were slain by the arrows of Apollo and Artemis." This statue, Flaxman observes, sixty feet in height, was the most renowned work of ancient sculpture, not for stupendous magnitude alone, but more for careful majesty and sublime beauty. His Minerva in the Parthenon was of gold and ivory.