PLATE LII.
Panelling of a Recess.
rose with such astonishing rapidity in the East, the Arabs, in their mosques, made use of the materials which they found ready to their hands in the ruins of old Roman buildings which they purposely destroyed; they took columns with their Corinthian capitals, etc., and adapted them to the arrangement required for their own temples. In their subsequent works they did not, as we should have done, continue to copy and reproduce the models which were at first so convenient to them; but, applying to them their own peculiar feelings, they gradually departed from the original model, to such an extent at last, that but for the intermediate steps we should be unable to discover the least analogy between them. Yet by this process the capitals of their columns can be traced back to the Corinthian order which they, in the first instance, found so abundantly for their use.”
Arab art must ever remain distinct from every other school and style, because the essential foundation of it is fixed and limited. Now, those who resign themselves to a style of art reduce themselves to formulas, to copies, or to diagrams. Greco-Roman art has its formulas of ordinance and propositions; Chino-Japanese art has its characteristic copies; and Syro-Arabian art its abstract and geometrical diagrams. The general elements of Arabian art, as applied to architecture and decoration, consist of stalactites, intertwinings, and ornaments. Stalactites, which are at the same time ornaments and members of architecture, are employed in corbelling, in coving, and in pendentives, and are modelled and superposed by tapia, or cut in wood and placed side by side, or opened into hollows by superficial casings in wire and tressing. The intertwinings which embellish the surfaces are carved and trimmed in splitboards of carpentry, or laid in compartments, or carved in open work, or engraved in stone, wood, and metal; or set in filigree, vignettes, or mosaics. The ornaments, which divide themselves into decoration by embroidery or embellishment in sections, reduce themselves to a small number of elements, or flower-work cut flat in outline. The outlines, complete in the boundary which limits them, are quite characteristic. They do not resemble in any way, except in so far as the unalterable laws of geometry decree, the outline drawn by Europeans, nor the cursive traits used by the Chinese and Japanese. All Arab ornament is by involution of lines; in short, it may be said to be entirely geometric.
The art of the Mohammedan, so powerful in appeal to the imagination, not only by beauty and grace, but by the doctrine of the Koran inscribed in their temples on every side in ornamented characters,—so admirably traced that they appear to form part of a perfected design proclaiming the power of Allah, and impressing upon the believer respect for the laws and the love of virtue;—produces an effect little short of magical. Still does that art accompany its religion in a lingering death. Crushed by the rapid strides which surrounding nations have made in the progress of civilization, and which have outrun and ruined it, yet do a few bright emanations appear, to show that as in religion they are faithful to their creed, so in art do their crumbling monuments preserve their shattered remains on which the observer still may see, in deep characters, the chronicles of the times.
In the illustrations which accompany these brief notes, the Arab’s mastery of line in the composition of design may be studied, and its mystery revealed; but to reduce these geometrical intertwinings to their original elements demands patience, application, and very much time. At first sight these diagrams may appear monotonous, but each is constructed on a particular theme. Most of them spread
PLATE LIII.