PLATE LI.
Band at Springing of Arch at the Entrance to one of the Halls.
In the art of the Arabs the inspiration is completely independent of living nature. The Arab artist proceeds from within to the exterior; he sets himself problems, and transfers them by means of the compass and rule. The decorative impulse of Arab art consists of geometrical diagrams either carved into relief, or inlaid, or simply laid flat. Since the inspiration is dry, and purely abstract, the artistic development is slight and unimportant; and, since the motive is restricted, Arab decorative art has remained simple, but still of an incomparable elegance, because the harmony between inspiration and execution is perfect. By their creed Mohammedan artists were forbidden to represent living forms, yet they adopted the principles they found in Nature, and developed them with absolute fidelity. Thus, as I showed in dealing with the architecture of the Alhambra, in surface decoration by the Moors the lines flow from a parent stem; every ornament, however distant, can be traced to its branch and root. In all cases we find the lines radiating from a parent stem, as we may see exemplified in Nature by the human hand, or in a leaf. We are never offended, as in modern practice, by the random introduction of an ornament set down without a reason for its existence. However irregular the expanse they have to decorate, they always commence by dividing the field into equal areas, and round these main lines they fill in their details, which invariably return to their parent stem, a system which proves them to have been absolute masters of space.
In the introduction to my volume on the Alhambra, I emphasised this fact, that the Moors ever had regard to the first principle of architecture—to decorate construction, never to construct decoration. In Arabian architecture, not only does the decoration arise naturally out of the construction, but the constructive idea is carried out in every detail of the ornamentation of the surfaces. A superfluous or useless ornament is never found in Moorish decoration; every ornament arises naturally and inevitably from the parent design. The general forms were first laid down; they were subdivided by general lines; the interstices were then filled in with ornament, to be again subdivided and enriched for closer inspection. The principle was carried out with the greatest refinement, and the harmony and beauty of all Moorish ornamentation is derived from its observance. The highest distinction was thereby obtained; the detail never interfering with the general form. Seen at a distance, the main lines strike the eye; on nearer approach, the ornamentation comes into the composition; and a minute inspection reveals the detail on the surface of the ornaments themselves.
Monsieur A. Rhone, in his L’Egypte à Petites Journées, holds that, “seeing the marvellous resources which the Arabs have found in geometry for decorating surfaces, one regrets less for art that the laws of Islamism have forbidden them, as an idolatrous act, to introduce representations of animated forms. Although these laws were not so strictly observed as is generally believed, who knows, if in turning the Arabian artists away from sculpture and statuary, they have not been the means of preserving this special and almost transcendant aptitude that the Semites have for all subtle combinations, and especially for those of geometrical numbers, lines, and figures?”
Although the principles of Moorish art are so rigid and severe, the Arabs have not remained exempt from exterior influence, but have adapted and incorporated foreign feeling into their art, and modified it to their purpose. A note by the late Owen Jones greatly emphasises this fact. He says:—“When the Mohammedan religion and civilisation