23. ART IN ANCIENT ITALY. Italy's geographical situation extending from north to south and reacting far into the Mediterranean Sea nearly midway between its eastern and western extremities, open on all sides to the migrations and the activities of coin merce, has from the earliest times subjected her to the influence of the civilizations of the vari ous ((Peoples of the Sea," Plunnicians, tians, Etruscans,• Greeks, the inhabitants Balkan Peninsula, and even the teeming life of the Orient. Indeed it was the movement of this Oriental civilization westward which re. tarded the progress of Italy in art as compared with Greece. Nevertheless some of the primi tive Italian peoples developed peculiar artistic manifestations worthy of consideration.
There was no true art in the Paleolithic Age, although some primitive Italian manufactures reveal a certain m'sthetic sentiment for form and considerable skill in the making. Liguria, the Valley of the Vibrata and the island of Capri, are the chief Italian districts where are found relics of human industry of the Paleolithic Age, but these scanty remains do not permit of the minute classification which is possible for the same periods in France.
The Neolithic period was more productive. Its remains are similar almost everywhere in Italy and in its objective manifestations it does not differ from the character which this period of civilization presents in the rest of Europe. In architecture we have not immense megalithic constructions as in England and France; per haps because the civilization of the Neolithic Age was not prevalent in Italy at the time in which these megalithic constructions were in vogue. ' Notwithstanding this, there are dolmens in the province of Otranto; the caves of Liguria are full of neolithic remains ; and the islands preserved for a long period the remains of the population and the civilization of the Neolithic period, and especially of the latter phases of that civilization what is called cupro- or wneolithic.
Throughout Italy may be found weapons of elegant form both in stone and in copper. Ceramics attained to artistic forms more than any other manufacture, as in the bell-shaped cups and bowls deiorated with ornaments crudely cut with a knife, or stamped with wormlike designs, and then filled with a color ing matter; the decorative element is always geometrical. The most beautiful works in neolithic ceramics are found among the insular populations, the Sicilians and the Sardinians, who had for a longer time tried to develop their civilization. Even their architecture made
noteworthy advances in this period, perhaps through the influence of the Orient. We do not know if the dwellings of the living had already assumed artistic forms, although the ceilings of the dwellings in the neolithic and neolithic ages indicate great progress in roof construction; they were circular or oval and partly sunk and covered with a kind of cupola. The artificial crematory vaults of Sicily are complicated systems of tombs, which may be compared with the Oriental tholoi; the nuraghi, the domes de Diana:, etc., of Sardinia, similar to the megalithic constructions of the Balearic Isles, or of Malta, and of Pantelleria, are an ulterior and characteristic development of the monuments of neolithic civilization; there is an Oriental suggestion in the cupolas, the rare spiral decorations, and in some exceptional in stances of fortified walls, or of encorbellement.
In Sicily (probably owing to ,Egeo.Oriental influences), the development of a ceramic art is to be noted which in the subsequent period sub stituted painting in place of incised decoration, with the richness of polychrome ornaments.
In regard to architecture, the new people of roving habits, accustomed to living in marshy plains or on the lakes, brought with them a knowledge of building which was better adapted for buildings of wood than of stone. The palisades and the uterremare of Lombardy, which are but the continuation • of these, are constructed on strict principles of exactitude, defense and permanence, which we find later in the Etruscan cities (for instance Marzabotto), or in the entrenched Roman camps. Indeed, it is even a matter of doubt with some whether the architectural portions of the terremare should be attributed to these primitive people at all, and not rather to the subsequent Roman buildings. The fact is that the rude manner of life and the low development of the arts do not well accord with such a perfect system of land surveying. The ceramics of these people are of course an imperfect paste, of a dark color, for the most part not well molded, scantily decorated, generally with protuberances or applied ornaments, more rarely with en graven or stamped designs.