The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

The revival of interest in Greek civilization was at first purely literary, and remained so during two or three centuries. But during the last century various travellers and residents abroad made collections which awoke an interest in the art; and though most of these collectors were content with merely showy sculpture, greatly restored and falsified for the market, yet some—such as Hamilton—took a real archæological interest in the unearthing and collecting of ancient art. The condition of study at the end of the eighteenth century was that many private men of wealth had bought large quantities of sculpture which was but little understood, and looked on more from a decorative than a scientific point of view, while there were the beginnings of a serious appreciation of it which had been just laid down by Winckelmann.

The nineteenth century opened with a grand work of publishing the principal treasures of classical art in England, which was finally issued in 1809 by Payne, Knight, and Townley; this marks the highest point of the dilettante collecting spirit, which was soon eclipsed by truer knowledge. Hitherto the best sculpture had hardly been known but at second hand through Roman copies; a closer acquaintance began with the travels of Dodwell, Gell, and Leake, all in the first decade of the century. The free opening of the British Museum, in 1805, and the accumulation there of all the best collections within the first quarter of the century, also served to educate a public taste. The first struggle of scientific and artistic knowledge against the dilettante spirit was over the Elgin marbles; by 1816 they were accepted as the masterpieces which all later criticism has proved them to be. The Æginetan and Phigaleian sculptures, brought to Munich and London, helped also to show the nobility of early Greek art; so that the last two generations have had a canon of taste to rely upon, the value of which cannot be overestimated.

Following on this noble foundation, other collectors worked in Greece and Asia Minor, and the British Museum profited by the labors of Burgon, Fellows, and Woodhouse between 1840 and 1860. The diplomatically supported work of Newton on the Mausoleum (1857–58), and Wood at Ephesus (1863–75), filled out our knowledge of the middle period of Greek art (350 B. C.). Comparatively little has been done since then by England, but the activity of the Germans at Olympia has given us the only original masterpiece that is known—the Hermes of Praxiteles (350 B. C.), and their work at Pergamon revealed the great altar belonging to the later age (180 B. C.). The excavations at Athens (in 1886) have produced the impressive statues dedicated to Athene about 520 B. C., which reveal the noble rise of Attic sculpture. But attention during the last quarter-century has been largely fixed upon the earlier ages. The discoveries of Schliemann at Hissarlik (Troy, 1870–82), Mycenæ (1876), Orchomenos (1880–81), and Tiryns (1884), opened a new world of thought and research. Though at first bitterly attacked, it is now agreed that these discoveries show us the civilization of Greece between 2000 and 1000 B. C. Lastly, during ten years past Egypt has provided the solid chronology for prehistoric Greece by discoveries of trade between the two countries.

We can now very briefly estimate the present position of our knowledge as gained during the century. Setting aside the early foreign pottery found in Egypt, which belongs probably to Greece or Italy at 5000 and 3000 B. C., we first touch a civilized city in the lowest town of Troy, where metal was scarcely yet in use, which is certainly before 2000 and probably about 3000 B. C. in date. Succeeding that is the finely built second Troy, rich in gold vases and ornaments, which—though mistaken by Schliemann for the Homeric Troy—must yet be long before that, probably before 2000 B. C. After the burning of that come three other rebuildings before we reach the town of the age of Mycenæ, about 1500 B. C. Of this, which was in Greece the climax of the prehistoric civilization, there are the splendid treasures found at Mycenæ, the magnificent domed tombs, the abundance of fine jewelry and metal-work, of beautiful pottery and glazed ornament. To this age belong the great palaces of Mycenæ, Tiryns, Athens, and other hill fortresses, of which hardly more than the plans can now be traced. And it is this civilization which traded eagerly with Egypt, exchanging the valued manufactures of each country. This period was at its full bloom from 1500–1200 B. C., and began to decay by 1100 B. C., this dating being given by the contact with Egypt.

This natural decadence of art in Greece was hastened by the invasion of the barbarous Dorians about 1000 B. C. Art, however, was by no means extinguished, but only repressed by the troubles of the age; and Athens, which was not conquered by the Dorians, was the main centre of the revival of the arts. Other examples of such a history are familiar in Egypt (after the Hyksos invasion) and in Italy (after the Lombards), where earlier abilities revive and bloom afresh when vigorous invaders become united to an artistic stock. After the centuries of warfare a quieter age allowed the growth of fine arts again in the seventh century B. C., largely influenced by Egyptian and Assyrian work at second hand, through the Greek settlements in Cyprus and Egypt. By 600 B. C. definite types of sculpture were started, and a course was begun which only ended in the fall of classical civilization. The century before the Persian invasion, in 480 B. C., was one of rapid development; and in sculpture and vase-painting we see that this century carried forward the arts to technical perfection and the highest power of expression. Immediately after the Persian wars came the supreme works of Pheidias and Myron, most familiar in the Parthenon and the Discobolus; and in vase-painting comes the reversal from vases drawn in black on a red ground to the blocking out of the ground in black, leaving the figure in red, thus giving far greater scope to the filling in of finely drawn detail. The civilization of Athens was also at its height in this age, under Pericles, and the minor arts received their most refined and perfect treatment. After this comes nothing but ripening to decay. It must always be remembered that we have but very few examples of original work of the great artists. Nearly all the actual marbles preserved are copies made in later times, which show little of the delicacy of the original; and the few original marbles that remain are mostly of unknown subjects by unknown men. The great work in Greek archæology during the last fifty years has been comparing the records of ancient art (in Pliny, Pausanias, etc.) with the remaining sculptures, critically assigning the various types of statues to their celebrated originals, and thus forming some idea of the real history of Greek art.

From these studies, full of detail and controversy, we may briefly sum up the characteristics of the principal artists and their imitators. At about 440 B. C. Pheidias showed in the Parthenon the highest expression of divine and mythic forms, in a simple and heroic style which was never equalled. Half a century later Polykleitos followed a more human expression, using motives (as in the Doryphoros), but yet portraying an abstract humanity. By 330 B. C. Praxiteles brought the expression of moods to his works, graceful, animated, and with a full ripeness, as in the Hermes of Olympia, or the Faun. Skopas, slightly later, marked his work by his great vigor and strong personality. This was the second turning-point, when ripeness passed into decay; and in Lysippos there is mere vivid naturalism and an impressionist manner without much soul or thought, as in his Apoxyomenos, about 330 B. C. After this mere triviality and genre subjects are usual, portraiture is a common aim, and dignity was vainly striven for in colossal size. The glorification of showing dead and vanquished enemies is seen in the Dying Gaul and figures of slain foes at Pergamon. Later on, about 180 B. C., we see the violent, complicated, and straining action of the figures around the great altar of Pergamon, which also appears in the groups of the Laocoon and Farnese Bull. In the Græco-Roman age a conscious artificiality took the place of life and expression, as we see in the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus di Medici, and the Farnese Hercules. Art was saved in the first century A. D. by the devotion of portraiture, which gave a sense of reality and conviction which is entirely absent in the imaginative works. Lastly, a painstaking study and admiration of earlier works led, under the wealthy patronage of Hadrian (130 A. D.), to an eclectic revival which was wholly artificial, and passed away within a generation. We have fixed on sculpture as the most complete expression of Greek art; in other directions there is neither enough material nor enough research to give us a connected view. Not a single town, hardly a single house, in Greece has been excavated; there is no consecutive knowledge of the ordinary products and objects of life; and there is very little recorded of the discoveries of the tombs. The artistic interest of the sculpture and architecture has starved other branches of archæology, and for Greece more remains to be done than for some less celebrated lands.

ITALY

The interest in Italy at the beginning of the nineteenth century was mainly for the sake of its second-hand version of Greek art, and for the architecture and painting of the Renaissance. On the contrary, now the objects from Greece itself have far eclipsed the Italian copies, and the interest lies in the early Italian civilization and its purely Roman derivatives; while modern taste values the mediæval art of Italy far from the bastard products of the florid age which followed. The first detailed studies in Italy were those on Pompeii, especially by Gell (1817), which made that debased style very popular, and paved the way for appreciation of better work. The various isolated discoveries of Etruscan tombs were summed up in the admirable work of Dennis (1848), which presented a general view of that civilization which has not been superseded. The earlier Italic culture has been examined in many places where accidental discoveries have revealed it during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and especially in the systematic work of Zannoni, at Bologna (1870–75), and of Orsi, lately, in Sicily. The history of the city of Rome has been almost rewritten in the last thirty years owing to the great changes of the new government; these have been largely worked by Lanciani, and recorded by him and Middleton. The view of Italian history at present begins in the Stone age, which has been well studied, and has links with the later periods, as in the general use of black pottery. The earliest metal objects are very simple blades of daggers, found in graves, mingled with flint arrow-heads and knives. The admirable Italian plan of preserving whole burials undisturbed in museums enables us to see these graves complete in the Kircherian Museum. A special branch of the early Bronze age life was the system of lake dwellings (natural or artificially water girt), which abound in the northern Italian lakes and over the plain of Lombardy. These towns (“terra mare”) are arranged on a rectangular plan, and form the earliest stage of many of the present cities. The full development of the Bronze age civilization seems to have been later than in Greece, at about 800 B. C., to which belong the great discoveries of tombs, weapons, and tools at Bologna, and the cemetery of Falerii.

Upon all the native Italic civilization came an entirely different influence from the immigrant Etruscan. Traditionally coming from Asia Minor, he brought art and religion which had no relation to the Italic. The earliest Etruscan paintings are strongly northern in style, influenced by north European feeling (Veii). But soon the Etruscan borrowed largely from other races, from the Greek mainly, but also from Assyria and Egypt. Thus the fascinating problem in Italy is to distinguish the various sources of Italic, Etruscan, Græco-Etruscan, Oriental-Etruscan, and pure Greek, which are found in all degrees of combination before Roman times, and which can still be traced through the Roman age. The characteristics of Etruscan taste are: (1) The extraneous objects and figures, such as rows of pendants to a metal vase, monstrous heads standing out from a bowl, and statuettes placed for handles; (2) in forms of vases and furniture, the combination of many different parts and curves which never form a whole design; (3) and in sculpture the large round head and staring eyes. In general, an air of clumsy adaptation by a race deficient in originality. The glory of the Etruscan was his engineering, which he handed as a legacy to Rome. Strange to say, although thousands of Etruscan inscriptions are known, and many words are translated, yet the language is sealed to us, and none of the many attempts to read it has succeeded. The scientific study of Etruscan tombs has been well followed lately, as shown in the Florence Museum, where a separate room is devoted to each city.