Hellenic and Italian

HELLENIC AND ITALIAN The Geometric Period.—During the dark ages of the transi tion from bronze to iron the decorative arts stood almost still but industrial metalwork was freely produced. There are a few remains of Geometric bronze vessels, but as in the case of the Early Minoan material, metal forms are recorded in their pottery derivatives. Some vase-shapes are clearly survivals from the Mycenaean repertory, but the greater number are new, and these are elementary and somewhat clumsy, spherical or biconical bodies, huge cylindrical necks with long band-handles and no spouts. Ceramic painted ornament also reflects originals of metal, and some scraps of thin bronze plate embossed with rows of knobs and lightly engraved in hatched or zigzag outline doubtless repre sent the art which the newcomers brought with them to Greek lands. This kind of decorative work is better seen in bronzes of the closely related Villanova culture of north and central Italy. A novel feature is the application of small figures in the round, particularly birds and heads of oxen, as ornaments of handles, lids and rims. The Italian Geometric style developed towards complication, in crowded narrow bands of conventional patterns and serried rows of ducks ; but contemporary Greek work was a refinement of the same crude elements. Engraving appears at its best on the large catch-plates of fibulae, some of which bear the earliest known pictures of Hellenic mythology. Small stat uettes of animals were made for votive use and also served as seals, the devices being cast underneath their bases. There is a large series of such figures, mostly horses, standing on engraved or perforated plates, which were evidently derived from seals; among the later examples are groups of men and centaurs. Pieces of tripod-cauldrons from Olympia have animals lying or standing on their upright ring-handles, which are steadied by human figures on the rims. Handles and legs are cast, and are enriched with graceful geometric mouldings. The bowls are wrought, and their shape and technique are pre-Hellenic. Here are two of the ele ments of classical Greek art in full course of development : the forms and processes of earlier times invigorated by a new aes thetic sense.

Oriental Influence.

A third element was presently supplied in the rich repertory of decorative motives, Egyptian and Assyrian, that was brought to Europe by Phoenician traders or fetched from Asia by adventurous Greeks. A vast amount of oriental merchandise found its way into Greece and Italy c. Soo B.C. There is some uncertainty about the place of manufacture of much of the surviving bronze work, but the same doubt serves to emphasize the close resemblance that these pieces, Phoenician, Greek or Etruscan, bear to their Assyrian or Egyptian models. Foremost among them are the bowls and shields from the Idaean cave in Crete. These interesting bowls are embossed with simple bands of animals, the shields with bold and complicated designs of purely oriental character. It is unlikely that a Greek craftsman in this vigorous Geometric age could suppress his style and pro duce mechanical copies such as these. So in Etruscan graves beside inscribed Phoenician bowls there have been found great cauldrons, adorned with jutting heads of lions and griffins, and set on conical stands which are embossed with Assyrian winged monsters.

Classical Greek and Etruscan.

The bowl and stand were favourite archaic forms. The Greek stand was a fusion of the cast-rod tripod and the embossed cone. Some early examples have large triangular plates between the legs, worked in relief ; but the developed type has separate legs and stays of which the joints are masked with decorative rims and feet and covering-plates. These ornaments are cast and chased, and are modelled in floral, animal and human forms. The feet are lions' paws, which some times clasp a ball or stand on toads; the rims and plaques bear groups of fighting animals, warriors, revellers or athletes, nymphs and satyrs, or mythological subjects in relief. Feasters recline and horsemen gallop on the rims of bowls; handles are formed by single standing figures, arched pairs of wrestlers, lovers holding hands, or two vertical soldiers carrying a horizontal comrade. Nude athletes serve as handles for all kinds of lids and vessels, draped women support mirror-disks around which love-gods fly, and similar figures crown tall shafts of candelabra. Handle-bases are modelled as satyr-masks, palmettes and sphinxes. This is Greek ornament of the 6th and later centuries. Its centres of manufacture are not precisely known, but the style of much archaic work points to Ionia. Etruscan fabrics approach their Greek originals so closely that it is not possible to separate them in technique or design, and the Etruscan style is no more than provincial Greek. Bronze was quite plentiful in Italy, the earliest Roman coinage was of heavy bronze, and there is literary evidence that Etruscan bronzes were exported. The process of line engrav ing seems to have been a Latin speciality; it was applied in pictorial subjects on the backs of mirrors and on the sides of large cylindrical boxes, both of which are particularly connected with Praeneste. The finest of all such boxes, the Ficoroni cista in the Villa Giulia at Rome, bears the signature of a Roman artist. These belong to the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. Greek mirrors of the same period are seldom engraved ; the disk is usually contained in a flat box which has a repousse design on its lid.

Hellenistic and Roman.—Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman forms are more conventional, and the new motives that belong to these periods are mostly floral. Busts and masks are the usual handle-plaques and spouts; heads and limbs of various animals are allotted certain decorative functions, as for instance the spirited mules' heads mentioned by Juvenal, which formed the elbow rests of dining-couches. These structural pieces are frequently inlaid with silver and niello. Bronze chairs and tables were com monly used in Hellenistic and Roman houses, and largely took the place of the monumental vases that were popular in earlier days. Small household articles, such as lamps, when made of bronze are usually Roman, and a peculiarly Roman class of personal ornament is a large bronze brooch inlaid with coloured enamels, a technique which seems to have had a Gaulish origin.

Fine Art.—Bronze statuettes were also made in every period of antiquity for votive use, and at least in Hellenistic and Roman times for domestic ornaments and furniture of household shrines. But the art of bronze statuary hardly existed before the introduc tion of hollow casting, about the middle of the 6th century, B.C. The most primitive votive statuettes are oxen and other animals, which evidently represent victims offered to the gods. They have been found abundantly on many temple sites. But classical art preferred the human subject, votaries holding gifts or in their ordinary guise, or gods themselves in human form. Such figures are frequently inscribed with formulas of dedication. Gods and goddesses posed conformably with their traditional characters and bearing their distinctive attributes are the most numerously represented class of later statuettes. They are a religious genre, appearing first in 4th century sculpture and particularly favoured by Hellenistic sentiment and Roman pedantry. Many of them were doubtless votive figures, others were images in domestic shrines, and some were certainly ornaments. Among the cult-idols are the dancing Lares, who carry cornucopias and libation-bowls. The little Heracles that Lysippus made for Alexander was a table ornament (epitrapezios) : he was reclining on the lion's skin, his club in one hand, a wine-cup in the other.

Technique.—With the invention of hollow casting bronze be came the most important medium of monumental sculpture, largely because of its strength and lightness, which admitted poses that would not be possible in stone. But the value of the metal in later ages has involved the destruction of nearly all such statues (see Musnobian, North African Archaeology). The few complete figures that survive, and a somewhat more numerous series of detached heads and portrait-busts, attest the excellence of ancient work in this material. The earliest statuettes are chiselled, wrought and welded; next in time come solid castings, but larger figures were composed of hammered sections, like domestic utensils, each part worked separately in repousse and the whole assembled with rivets (o4wpiXara). Very little of this flimsy fabric is extant, but chance has preserved one bust entire, in the Polledrara Tomb at Vulci. This belongs to the early 6th century B.C., the age of repousse work. The process was soon superseded in such subjects by hollow casting, but beaten reliefs. the household craft from which Greek bronze work sprang, per sisted in some special and highly perfected forms, as handle plates on certain vases, emblemata on mirror-cases, and particularly as ornaments of armour, where light weight was required. The Siris bronzes in the British Museum are shoulder-pieces from a 4th century cuirass. Casting was done by the cire-perdue process in clay moulds, but a great deal of labour was spent on finishing. The casts are very finely chased, and most large pieces contain patches, inserted to make good the flaws. Heads and limbs of statues were cast separately and adjusted to the bodies : besides the evidence of literature and of the actual bronzes there is an illus tration of a dismembered statue in the making on a painted vase in Berlin.

Pliny and other ancient writers have much to say in regard tc various alloys of bronze—Corinthian, Delian, Aeginetan, Syra cusan—in regard to their composition and uses and particularly to their colour effects, but their statements have not been con firmed by modern analyses and are sometimes manifestly false. Corinthian bronze is said to have been first produced by accident in the Roman burning of the city (I 46 B.c.) when streams of molten copper, gold and silver mingled. Similar tales are told by Plutarch and Pliny about the artists' control of colour : Silanion made a pale-faced Iocasta by mixing silver with his bronze, Aris tonidas made Athamas blush with an alloy of iron. There is good evidence that Greek and Roman bronzes were not artificially patinated, though many were gilt or silvered. Plutarch admires the blue colour of some very ancient statues at Delphi, and won ders how it was produced ; Pliny mentions a bitumen wash, but this was doubtless a protective lacquer; and a 4th century in scription from Chios records the regulations made there for keep ing a public statue clean and bright. (See GREEK ART; ROMAN ART; SCULPTURE; NUMISMATICS; SEALS.) (E. J. F.)