4. The wild look of the furious bull, ready to dash the beautiful frame of a frail woman to pieces. Dramatic justice is here meted out by the artist in a most revolting way. A bull is called in to help to punish; it is the vulgarity of the cruel revenge that degrades the technically masterly work of art. The free grouping of marble statues is one of the most difficult tasks, and was never attempted during the classic period of ancient art. A mixture of men and animals is even more to be avoided.
As soon as the gods of Egypt changed their architectural and monumental position, they lost their sway over the superstitious masses; as soon as the Greeks lost that balance of morality, which, in the form of the beautiful, regulated their life, science, and art, they lost at the same time their productive power. Form and idea as in Asia came into conflict; the formal had attained the extreme of perfection, and the new ideas had not yet ripened.
Art was either to touch the feelings or to speak to reason—it was to be based on a mere imitation of nature, or to be the expression of some thought in some form. This ‘either,’—‘or,’—or this ‘neither,’—‘nor,’ which divided art-critics during this period, made an end of art altogether. The Asiatics rent the universe asunder with conflicting abstractions based on the phenomena of nature; the Greeks lost their power, when they once recognised that there was something higher than the mere form. A new sphere was felt to open new spiritual beauties—but this sphere was to be attained through totally different means. The formal was however so highly developed by the Greeks that we shall see the new spirit, after more than a thousand years, become incarnate in those forms.
We see then clearly that art, the product of the creative force of men, requires a certain moral and intellectual condition, under which alone it can actively live. Change the moral temperature through the superstitions of a terrified populace, the aspect of nature, the despotic organisation of government, or the rule of a wild, uneducated mob, and the artistic force will also change or die out altogether. The artist acts only to a certain degree on the public; the public reacts with a greater combined vis inertiæ on the artist, who is merely the reflection of certain ideas floating in the intellectual atmosphere around him. Is a man who sees nothing but emaciated, beggarly, or sanctimonious faces, thin limbs, hungry looks, dwellings bare of all domestic comfort, decayed brick-houses and crumbling walls, to paint convivial scenes of happiness and joy? Or let him change this atmosphere and live in a sphere of so-called respectability; having always the same bland smile before him, the same trimmed whiskers, the same business-like self-contentment, the same stiff collars and cuffs; hearing the same stereotyped, insignificant phrases about the weather or the funds, the price of coals or meat—will he, influenced by such an atmosphere, not draw or paint only caricatures, and never grand and heart-stirring historical paintings, recording in glowing colours scenes full of life, excitement, passion, and dramatic action? In such surroundings it is necessary for an artist to create for himself a world of his own—an intellectual world—by turning to the glorious records of the past, and devoting every spare hour to the study of the ancients and the reading of history. His imagination, deadened by reality, must be fed and nourished by the poets, poetry, works of art, and historical facts of the past. Our meagreness and poverty in artistic productions take their origin in our unpardonable neglect of the study of history; through this neglect we have deprived art altogether of its firmest basis.
The very moment that the Greek artists lost their historical and poetical ground, they took to and excelled in painting barbers’ and shoemakers’ shops; oyster shells, vases, little combinations of chairs and musical instruments, and small things, with great accuracy. In fact the same causes produced the same pictorial effects; the mind of the Greek nation had dwindled, and their works of art embraced decorations of household furniture and pottery. In these ornamentations the reminiscences of a by-gone age may be traced; they are still symmetrical to the highest degree, plants are still treated with great conventional freedom, but the Greeks only worked as skilful workmen—artists they produced no more.
[CHAPTER IX.]
ETRUSKAN ART.
The first question that here suggests itself is, who were the Etruskans? Their name Tuskan, from Tuisko, points at once to an Aryan branch of Teutonic race. But ethnologists differ. Some say they were Phœnicians, others assert they were Egyptians; some that they were pure Teutons, and others that they were pure Kelts. Taking their old pottery into consideration, as given in Lord Hamilton’s admirable plates, or in the collection of the Museum at Clusium (Chiusi), we are induced to pronounce the aborigines of Etruria to have been Turanians, conquered by immigrant Aryans. This mixture of Aryans and Mongols under the influence of a totally different aspect of nature, on a different soil, under different social and religious conditions, produced a type quite different from the Greek—a kind of transition link between the Pelasgians and the Romans.
Two distinct immigrations of Aryans into Etruria are recorded. The first about 1650 B.C., when Pelasgians and Thyrrenians settled amongst the aborigines; and the second, 400 years before Herodotus, about the times of Thales and Lykurgus. Of the first immigration we have scarcely any relics; the second time the immigrants succeeded in forming an organised social state; they brought with them Greek mythological notions, and a kind of Greek writing. Their language and writing died out after Augustus, and disappeared altogether before Julian, fourth century A.D. Nature forced them to industry and enterprise. The Etruskans had to cultivate their fields by individual exertion; in spring they had to ward off the devastating waters of overflowing rivers, and in summer they had to provide water for their parched valleys. They consequently became masters in constructing aqueducts and irrigating the land, at an early period.