Fig. 5.
The deciphering and derivation of such forms as these is naturally enough more difficult; in the case of most of them we are not even in possession of the most necessary preliminaries to the investigation, and in the case of others there are very important links missing (e.g., for the well-known Greek palmettas). In proportion as the representation of the plant was a secondary object, the travesty has been more and more complete. As in the case of language, where the root is hardly recognizable in the later word, so in decorative art the original form is indistinguishable in the ornament. The migration of races and the early commercial intercourse between distant lands have done much to bring about the fusion of types; but again in contrast to this we find, in the case of extensive tracts of country, notably in the Asiatic continent, a fixity, throughout centuries, of forms that have once been introduced, which occasions a confusion between ancient and modern works of art, and renders investigations much more difficult. An old French traveler writes: "J'ai vu dans le trésor d'Ispahan les vetements de Tamerlan; ils ne different en rien de ceux d'aujourd'hui." Ethnology, the natural sciences, and last, but not least, the history of technical art are here set face to face with great problems.
FIG. 6.
In the case in point, the study of the first group of artistic forms that have been elaborated by Western art leads to definite results, because the execution of the forms in stone can be followed on monuments that are relatively not very old, that are dated, and of which the remains are still extant. In order to follow the development, I ask your permission to go back at once to the very oldest of the known forms. They come down to us from the golden era of Greek decorative art—from the fourth or fifth century B.C.—when the older simple styles of architecture were supplanted by styles characterized by a greater richness of structure and more developed ornament. A number of flowers from capitals in Priene, Miletus, Eleusis, Athens (monument of Lysicrates), and Pergamon; also flowers from the calathos of a Greek caryatid in the Villa Albani near Rome, upon many Greek sepulchral wreaths, upon the magnificent gold helmet of a Grecian warrior (in the Museum of St. Petersburg)—these show us the simplest type of the pattern in question, a folded leaf, that has been bulged out, inclosing a knob or a little blossom (see Figs. 3 and 4). This is an example from the Temple of Apollo at Miletus, one that was constructed about ten years ago, for educational purposes. Here is the specimen of the flower of the monument to Lysicrates at Athens, of which the central part consists of a small flower or fruits (Figs. 5 and 6).
FIG. 7.
The form passes over into Roman art. The larger scale of the buildings, and the pretensions to a greater richness in details, lead to a further splitting up of the leaf into acanthus-like forms. Instead of a fruit-form a fir-cone appears, or a pine-apple or other fruit in an almost naturalistic form.
In a still larger scale we have the club-shaped knob developing into a plant-stem branching off something after the fashion of a candelabrum, and the lower part of the leaf, where it is folded together in a somewhat bell-shaped fashion, becomes in the true sense of the word a campanulum, out of which an absolute vessel-shaped form, as e.g. is to be seen in the frieze of the Basilica Ulpia in Rome, becomes developed.