We remember the destruction of these and similar works with the utmost regret; and the more so, because that destruction was owing in many instances to the mad violence of Christian fanatics; the iconoclasts of the eighth century. The remains which we possess even of smaller objects are not only of excessive rarity, but they cannot with any certainty be attributed to artists working in Greece itself. Ivory and metal have perished under conditions which have left uninjured fragile vases. There are some examples of carvings in ivory in the British museum, and especially in the collection lately purchased from signor Castellani which have been found in Etruscan tombs. Many of these are perhaps the work of Greek artists.
Etruscan sculpture was probably derived at first from Egypt: but the art of the one was entirely and unchangingly conventional, and never seems to vary from a certain fixed style. The Etrurian, on the contrary, soon cleared itself from the bondage of old traditions and, even when rudest, was free and attempted to imitate nature in the representation of muscles, hair, and draperies.
Neither the beauty nor the wonderful spirit of the execution of some of the ivories in the British museum has been exceeded or perhaps equalled in any later time. Among them the following ought to be particularly mentioned:—
A large bust of a woman, of the Roman republican period, and a small carving of the head of a horse, scarcely inferior to the work of any Greek artist of the best time. A very important head of a Gorgon, as seen on Athenian coins, with eyes inlaid in gold, about two inches in diameter; probably the button of a woman’s dress. Two lions, the heads and part only of the bodies, lying across each other, very admirable and full of character; and another lion’s head, the top perhaps of the handle of a mirror. These were chiefly discovered, with numerous other fragments, at Chiusi and Calvi. At Chiusi also were found the panels of two small caskets which have been put together; both are of early date; one it may be of the fourth century b.c. and Phœnician in style. There is also in the same case a fine small ivory statuette, much later, perhaps of the second century: a boy, still partly embedded in the mortar or refuse in which it was found.
The workers in ivory during the first centuries of our æra were, as a class, sufficiently numerous to be exempted by law from some personal and municipal obligations. Pancirolus, in his “Notitiæ,” gives a list of these bodies of artificers. He mentions as exempt, architects, medical men, painters, and others, with references to the various laws under which they were excused; and among them are “workmen in ivory, who make chairs, beds, and other things of that sort.”
Nevertheless, carvings in ivory of the Roman imperial times before Constantine are extremely scarce. In the superb collection in the South Kensington museum there are two only which can safely be so attributed. One is the fragment, no. 299; the other is the beautiful leaf, no. 212.
The British museum (not to mention a large number of fragments chiefly of caskets or decorations of furniture, tesseræ and tickets of admission to theatres and shows, dice, and the like) possesses a few pieces, of which one is extremely fine in character and in good preservation. The subject is Bellerophon, who is represented on Pegasus, killing the Chimæra; and it is executed in open work. The age is somewhat doubtful. Professor Westwood places it as early as the third century, and his judgment must be treated with great deference. Others, of no slight authority, are indisposed to give it an earlier date than the fourth century. This admirable ivory has somewhat of the character of the book-cover in the Barberini collection, engraved by Gori, in the second volume of his great work on diptychs. That famous piece is not perfect, nor is there any name upon it. Gori fairly argues that it represents the emperor Constantius, about the year 357. The Bellerophon is of finer work.
The gradual and uninterrupted decline of art from the days of Augustus is to be traced as distinctly in the ivories which have been preserved as in ancient buildings. But we can scarcely agree with D’Agincourt as regards its rapidity. Speaking of sculpture generally, he says: “On vit celle-ci successivement grande, noble, auguste sous le prince qui mérita ce nom; licencieuse et obscène sous Tibère; grossièrement adulatrice sous Caracalla; extravagante sous Néron, qui faisait dorer les chefs-d’œuvre de Lysippe.” D’Agincourt probably refers to the barbarism of Caligula, who proposed to put a head of himself upon the Olympic Zeus by Phidias; or to Claudius, who cut the head of Alexander out of a picture by Apelles, to replace it with his own. Suetonius has recorded the first of these atrocities (can we speak of them by a lighter name?) and Pliny the last.
In the collection given to the town of Liverpool by Mr. Mayer there are two very celebrated pieces, possibly of the third century; they were originally the leaves of a diptych. On one is Æsculapius, on the other Hygieia.