WE give reproductions of the portraits of Thomas Portunari and his wife, referred to by Mr. Weale in his third article (THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, No. 3, May 1903, p. 336), as they may be of interest to students of Flemish art, since their authorship is a disputed question. These portraits have hitherto been attributed to Memlinc, but, when they were exhibited at Bruges last year, this attribution was doubted by many critics. Mr. Weale, as our readers know, has suggested that the portraits may be early works of Hugh van der Goes. The question is one on which further opinion will be welcome. Amateurs of mediaeval jewellery, by the way, should notice the very beautiful necklace worn by Portunari’s wife, which is a remarkably fine example of fifteenth-century work.
PORTRAITS OF THOMAS PORTUNARI AND HIS WIFE; ATTRIBUTED TO HANS MEMLINC; IN THE COLLECTION OF MONSIEUR LÉOPOLD GOLDSCHMIDT
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LARGER IMAGE
ON ORIENTAL CARPETS
❧ ARTICLE III.—THE SVASTIKA ❧
UNTIL a comparatively few years ago, the literature of science was almost wholly silent on the subject of the Svastika. Professor Wilson, of the Smithsonian Institute, writing in the early nineties, sets forth that in most of the best-known encyclopedias, both European and American, the word Svastika is not so much as mentioned. It was indeed, he says, this to him incomprehensible omission, and consequent admittedly general ignorance, that prompted him to make an exhaustive study of the subject, and to embody the results of his researches in what is undoubtedly the standard work on Svastika at the present time. Yet even Professor Wilson, while giving to his readers the great mass of evidence he has collated, is chary of expressing any definite opinion as to the origin and significance of this universal symbol. In this reserve he is doubtless prudent, at least in so far that he has avoided entering upon a controversy which must probably be endless. The theories, indeed, that have been presented concerning the origin and the symbolism of the Svastika are as numerous as they are diverse. Every kind of suggestion has been made as to its relation to the most ancient Deities, and as to its typifying of certain qualities. Various writers have regarded it as being the emblem, respectively, of Zeus and of Baal, of the Sun God, of the Sun itself as a God, and of the Sun chariot. Of Agni (the Ignis of the Romans) the fire God, and of Indra the rain God. In the estimation of others, again, it is typical of the sky and of the sky God; and finally of the Deity of all Deities, the great God, the maker and ruler of the universe. Again, it has been held to symbolize light and the God of light, and the forked lightning, as a manifestation of that Deity; and yet again, according to some, from its intimate association with the Lotus, it has been regarded as the emblem of the God of water. That it is the oldest known Aryan symbol is hardly in dispute. There are writers who have announced their conviction that it represents Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer. Certainly it appears in the footprints of Buddha, engraved upon the living rock of Indian mountains; equally certainly it stood for the Jupiter Tonans and Pluvius of the Latins, and for the Thor of the Scandinavians, though that it represented a variety of the ‘Thor hammer’ is now considered to be disproved. Many have attributed a Phallic meaning to it, or, regarding it as the symbol of the female, have claimed that it represents the generative principles of mankind, while its appearance on the person of certain Goddesses, Artemis, Hera, Demeter, Astarte, and the Chaldean ‘Nana,’ the leaden Goddess from Hissarlik, has caused it to be claimed as a sign of fecundity. But, as Professor Wilson points out, and as every other writer has allowed, whatever else the Svastika may have stood for, and however many meanings it may have had, it was always, if not primarily, ornamental. It may have been used with any or all and other than the above significations, but it was always ornamental as well.
