The Heracles may be regarded as a study. Charis and Tyche were allegories, the latter having been represented sitting “because happiness does not stand fast.” The most celebrated of them all, Calumny, is minutely described by Lucian. It portrayed a man, whose inclination to credit evil reports was characterized by large ears, sitting between two women, Ignorance and Mistrust, and receiving Calumny, a magnificent woman excited with passion, preceded by Envy; she drags in a youth by the hair, who vainly, with hands uplifted, calls the gods to witness. Behind the train advances Repentance, a mourning female figure in black, looking back with pain and shame upon the tardy appearance of Truth. Similar in character is the picture of the chained war demon, belonging partly to the group of portraits. A third allegory, of little intrinsic worth, is set forth with great artistic ability—Bronte, Astrape, and Keraunobolia—thunder, with the flash and stroke of lightning.
Among the portraits, allegorical in nature, was the famous picture in which Alexander, with lightning in his right hand, was represented as Jupiter. The monarch himself was so well pleased with this that he said there were two Alexanders—one the unconquered son of Philip, the other the inimitable creation of Apelles. But little is known of the king’s portraits, whether equestrian, in triumphal chariots, or surrounded by deities and allegorical figures; nor of those of Philip and his generals, of the tragic actor Gorgosthenes of Habron, nor of that of the artist himself.
If Apelles be scrutinized more closely in order to make clear the chief characteristics by which he won such brilliant renown, it will be found that it was not in composition. In this, as in treatment of perspective, he gave precedence to his fellow-pupils Melanthios and Asclepiodoros. That he was aware of this weakness, and avoided occasion for manifesting it, is shown by the fact that most of his paintings contained few figures. When more appeared, instead of being picturesquely grouped and treated, they were ranged in rows, almost like reliefs, better suited to the allegorical subjects so prevalent with Apelles, and so common in his time, than to mythological and historical representations. Though allegory may, in great measure, be unfavorable to true art, because, as Winckelmann says, it forces the painter “to tint his brush with reason,” still that of Apelles has lately been too much depreciated. The Calumny has been pronounced an error of fancy, rough symbolism, and an inharmonious assemblage of persons and personifications. But these were the legitimate materials of the artist, and he succeeded, at least, in the representation of character and in truthfulness of drawing. The lightning group was something more than a piece of technical bravura. Who would prize the picture less because thunder and lightning were represented instead of Zeus, a deity who would have been attempted by no painter of antiquity, or, indeed, of later times? Though his motive may have been purely intellectual, the painter remained the same, whether he portrayed a Cassandra or a Diabole—whether he more or less displayed his astounding mastery. Apelles will be more rightly judged if he be treated as a painter rather than an artist; as such we recognize in him a technical and many-sided perfection. Different accounts speak of him as rapid and sure in drawing, his lines being not only correct, but in the highest degree characteristic. The maxim of Apelles “No day without a line”—that is, without exercise in drawing—has become a proverb, if not quite in its original sense. Through this incessant practice his hand acquired such sureness that it followed the will implicitly, and made possible even the hair-splitting execution related in an anecdote which has been unjustly discredited by critics. Apelles entered one day the workshop of Protogenes, in the absence of the latter, and made known his visit by drawing a line upon a tablet at hand with such swing and surety, such purity and smoothness, that the Rhodian master, upon his return, recognized the hand of Apelles. In order to show himself equal, Protogenes split the line by a second one in a different color, but acknowledged himself defeated when Apelles divided this through its entire length by a third. An evidence of the sharpness and certainty of his characterization with simple lines is given in the story of a servant who had injured him, and whom Apelles, though he had seen him only once, so sketched with charcoal upon the wall that the likeness was recognized by King Ptolemy after the first strokes. It will readily be understood that such capacity must have fitted the artist especially for portraiture; and his portraits attained such striking likeness and truthfulness that a physiognomist assumed to be able, by them, to discern not only the exact age of the subject, but even the time of his future death. No further testimony is needed than the Anadyomene to prove that his works were perfect in correctness and expression as well as in beauty.
The employment of color had fully kept pace with this matchless drawing, though Apelles seems to have been limited to painting in distemper, without the use of encaustic. The softened glazings are particularly mentioned, which made the unbroken light all the more brilliant. In the portrait of Alexander, the hand, outstretched with the lightning, appeared to stand quite out from the panel, a result perhaps equally owing to masterly foreshortening in the drawing. The beauty of his color was noted, and especially its vigor; the fame of the Aphrodite cannot be understood without the former, nor that of the Alexander and the Lightning without the latter. This many-sided, technical perfectness, unattained before Apelles, and in which Pliny says that he excelled all other painters together, may have had its germ in the school of Pamphilos, as the Sikyonians devoted especial attention to artistic execution. To these eminent qualities, however, were added the intrinsic merits of the master himself, upon which he laid the greatest stress, and which he ascribed to that charm understood by the Greeks in the word charis. That this was chiefly to be found in the just measure of completeness was explained by Apelles when he declared himself to have been surpassed by Protogenes in all but the knowledge of the right moment to lay aside the brush, without which this charm, through overmuch care, is lost.
By this technical mastery, clearness of characterization and grace, Apelles so delighted all who saw his works that, according to the numerous anecdotes that illustrate his position, he was the most popular artist of all antiquity. In face of such authority, it would be unjust to see in him, as some have done, the beginnings of the decline of art. Though his artistic efforts may not have equalled those of Polygnotos, because he could more easily satisfy the ethical demands of his time, still it must be acknowledged that, as a painter, he surpassed him as far as, in sculpture, Praxiteles surpassed Calamis and the other predecessors of Pheidias. But in Pheidias a high ideal was united to an absolute perfection of execution which, in painting, Polygnotos was far from having attained. “In the history of painting,” says Brunn, “each of these two fields has its separate point of greatest elevation; the fame, therefore, which, in sculpture, undoubtedly raised Pheidias above all others, appeared, in painting, divided between Polygnotos and Apelles.”
Protogenes of Caunos, or rather, with reference to his work, of Rhodes, was a rival of Apelles. He seems to have been self-taught, or, at least, to have been the pupil of an entirely obscure master. The admiration of Apelles for Protogenes was so great that he expressed a desire to buy up his works and publish them as his own; but numerous anecdotes show that Apelles was in the way of bestowing his flattery upon every great and celebrated man. Protogenes is said to have painted over his Ialysos four times, the better to secure it from destruction, so that, on the peeling of the outer layer of pigment, the surface below might present the same color. But this can only be a foolish legend, invented to illustrate his extreme care. Similar tales of a later time reported him to have worked upon the Ialysos seven or eleven years, and to have fed upon nothing but lupines, for fear that luxury might blunt the acuteness of his senses. Perhaps this means that the painter’s genius was not recognized until late in life, up to which time he had lived in great poverty. Of his picture in the Propylæa at Athens, representing Paralos and Hammonias—personifications of Athenian ships—there is an equally idle story that he did not paint the ships themselves because, until his fifteenth year, he had earned his bread as a ship-painter.
In Protogenes we may conceive a perfection such as only the most unwearied care could attain. This perfection was neither in the ideas nor in the composition; for the subjects of his pictures, known to us as heroic or historical portraits, or, at most, as groups of few persons without action, were in themselves far less important than those of Apelles. But the illusive effect must have been complete if, as Petronius says, one could not look even at the sketches without a feeling of awe on account of their truthfulness to nature. This carefulness extended even to the smallest accessories, like the wonder of the partridge at the reclining satyr, and the foam on the mouth of the dog in the Ialysos; an effect which, it is said, was at last accomplished by the pressure—not the throwing—of a sponge. Yet the wearisomeness of this perfection was not to be denied, and here, in the eyes of Apelles, lay the weakness of this master.
The relations of Apelles with another rival, the Egyptian Antiphilos, were not so friendly. The great celebrity of this painter rested upon a peculiarity directly contrary to that of Protogenes, designated by Quintilian as facility; that is, a freshness and genial security of conception and treatment in everything which his brush touched. His range of subjects exceeded that of Protogenes, or even of Apelles; for he painted with equal excellence pictures of the deities, mythological scenes, portraits, genre pieces, such as the Wool-comber and the Boy Blowing the Fire; and even caricatures, such as that of Gryllos, with a face reminding one of the significance of his own name—the Porker; whence it comes that all caricatures were, in antiquity, called Grylli. That he was fond of startling effects of light is evident from the Boy Blowing the Fire, the glow of which was reflected upon his face; also from his renowned satyr Aposcopeuon—the Gazer—whose glance the shielding hand seemed at once to intensify and to conceal.
Aetion, according to Brunn, also belongs to the group of artists contemporary with Apelles. His importance can be measured only by the esteem of antiquity, and by the minute descriptions of one of his pictures. This represented the marriage of Alexander and Roxana; the latter, sitting modestly upon a couch, is served by Cupids, who take the veil from her head and loosen her sandals. The king, accompanied by Hephaistion as attendant, with torches, is led towards the bride by an Eros; two more, panting under the weight of the shaft, bear the lance of the conqueror, while others carry by the handles a shield; and one Cupid, who has crept into a coat of mail, seems, from his hiding-place, to lie in wait for those about to pass. It is not strange that this composition, so charming in the description of Lucian, should have led modern painters to attempt to reproduce it; as in the frescos of Raphael in the Borghese Gallery, and those of Razzi in the Farnesina.
Among other masters of the time of Alexander were the Athenian Asclepiodoros, of whom we know little more than that Apelles gave him the preference in composition; and Theon of Samos, whose works degenerated into an attempt to secure a theatrical rather than a natural effect. Besides tragic scenes, like the murder of his mother by Orestes, and the blinding of the singer Thamyris, this is shown in the heavily armed warrior called by Quintilian his masterpiece—a man in the violence of attack with a drawn sword. To increase the theatrical effect, this picture was exhibited by the artist accompanied with the flourish of trumpets. If we here bear in mind the so-called Borghese warrior of Agasias—that sculptural cousin of the Hoplite—we cannot mistake the spirit of a time which, after the inner significance had perished, clung entirely to the external, and, renouncing truthfulness in composition, which here would have demanded a group, was satisfied with a theatrical sham. The farthest remove from the conceptions of Polygnotos had now been reached.
Hellenism, by which is meant the civilization of the period after Alexander, when the Grecian kingdom had become cosmopolitan, satisfied its artistic requirements by a repetition of what the previous centuries had produced. The attempt was made, in sculpture and in painting, to combine results already won, generally in a shallow eclecticism. Of the numerous painters in that decorative period few names have been handed down. The most was accomplished by the masters of Sikyon where the tradition of the energetic school of Pamphilos was not yet lost. Protogenes in Rhodes, and Antiphilos in Egypt, also had some followers who were not quite without fame. Timomachos of Byzantion, at least, was equal to his great predecessors of the time of Alexander. His Medea was purchased by Cæsar for eighty talents, and his other works are not less praised; among them one, perhaps historical, showing two men in conversation, and the Gorgo, may be connected with an event related by Herodotos (v. 51). If, as we are told, there was a Medea represented before the murder of her children, in a struggle between hatred of her husband and motherly love—a subject treated in a Pompeian wall-painting in the museum at Naples; an Ajax, after his fury, meditating suicide; and an Iphigeneia in Tauris, perhaps recognizing her brother, we may conclude that Timomachos had returned to the pathetic element, and that he united with it, so far as possible, the technical perfection of the Alexandrian period. It is possible that the painter stood in the same artistic relation to the sculptors Pasiteles, Stephanos, and Menelaos as did Theon to Agasias.
After Parrhasios, side by side with the grander style had developed a species of cabinet-painting which seems to have been devoted especially to obscene subjects (Pornographia). Already in the time of Alexander, pictures of a small size were much in favor; besides the Egyptian Antiphilos already mentioned as celebrated in this direction, Callicles and Calates worked in it exclusively, and Peiræicos had great fame as a painter of this kind. His subjects were not of a lewd nature, but were taken from the lower ranks of life, such as booths of barbers and cobblers, donkeys, eatables, etc.; by which one is reminded of the genre pieces and still-life paintings of the Netherlands. Pornographia was thus changed to Rhopographia, painting of small wares. In later times the term employed for obscene painting seems to have been Rhyparographia.
This trivial painting naturally continued to be prevalent in the periods of the Diadochi and the Romans, since art, when reduced to mere decoration, cultivated by preference graceful and lively subjects. It was extended even to the floors, for which mosaic had been used as early as the time of the royal court of Pergamon. If the decoration of walls is based upon tapestry, as Semper has made evident, this is especially the case with colored floors. The effect of mosaic, in which form painting now took possession of the pavement, differed little from that of weaving and embroidery. Sosos was considered as the oldest and most celebrated master of this process, perhaps because he first carried it beyond simple patterns. He represented, in the so-called “unswept hall” at Pergamon, remnants of food, fruit-rinds, etc., as if scattered upon the floor; also a dove drinking from a shell. The celebrity of these works makes it natural that several repetitions of the dove should have been found. It seems, however, that the practice of this art was not in extensive use before the time of the Roman empire, when it spread over all the floors, as painting did over all the walls. The mosaics in the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which are composed of rough pebbles, may, however, be even more ancient than the works of Sosos in Pergamon.
Fig. 246.—The Campana Tomb at Veii.
ETRURIA.
AT the time when Hellenic influence had developed to its fullest extent in Magna Græcia, the Etruscans had long passed their highest point of perfection. Roman tradition gives no little significance to their civilization, in its artistic as well as in its political aspects, though it was far less grand and brilliant than that of their neighbors in the south of the Italian peninsula. But as Rome rose, Etruria fell; and in the time of the Peloponnesian war it had but a shadow of its former dominant position in Italy.
Whether this people were related to the ancient Greeks, or merely mixed with the Pelasgic and Hellenic element through emigration from the western coasts of Greece, it is certain that the older culture of the nation shows a great resemblance to that of the countries beyond the Adriatic. This may have been owing partly to common Oriental prototypes, and to native imitation of these, and partly to the fact that certain primitive results of civilization, under like material premises, naturally assume a more or less similar form without any real historical connection.
The method of building the Etruscan walls is particularly a case in point. The resemblance of these to the most ancient fortifications of Greece makes possible, though it does not establish, an intimate communication between the two races, to which also the use of Greek letters for the strange Etruscan language certainly points. The so-called Cyclopean jointing, however, presents itself in every civilized land where rock is found which naturally breaks in polygonal forms. So also square-stone masonry early appears wherever the material, quarried without difficulty in rectangular forms, favors this more satisfactory method. Besides both these varieties, the Etruscans made use of bricks, as shown by the foundations of the walls of Veii, which above-ground are mainly built of cut stone. These are at least as ancient as the time of the later kings.
Some of the remaining ruins of Etruria, and of Central Italy—for the peculiar civilization of that region is not strictly confined to the limits of the Etruscan language—show in the building of gates a new technical element. It has been seen how the Greeks in vain sought a substitute for the arch, to them an inadmissible, if not an unattainable, feature; and exhausted every conceivable method of horizontal stone-laying in order to cover their gateways. Similar evasive attempts are not wanting in Etruria; the Cyclopean walls, especially, present portal constructions similar to those of Mykenæ. But through the perfection of stone-cutting, and building with rectangular blocks, the ceiling of the passage by means of the arch was early attained. That this step was taken before the invasion of the Gauls is shown by the still remaining Gate of Falerii (Fig. 247), which city, as is well known, lost its importance under Camillus. It is not certain whence the people of Central Italy attained their knowledge of the arch. Though it had been familiar to the Assyrians as early as the ninth century B.C., it is possible that they made this important discovery independently, perhaps somewhat later than the Mesopotamians. The vault of the Cloaca Maxima in Rome dates from the sixth century B.C., but it shows, even at this early period, a perfection which gives evidence of long previous use. Canal-building was one of the first conditions of existence on the western coast of Central Italy, where the drainage of the swamps—the neglect of which, since the Middle Ages, has reduced the once populous Maremma to a pestilential desert—the discharge of the mountain lakes, which otherwise overflow from time to time, desolating the lower country, and the regulation of the river-courses, alone made possible the settlement of a people and the founding of flourishing cities west of the Apennines. It is therefore not improbable that the great canal discovered by Dennis, which once drained the swampy Valley of the Marta, preceded the Cloaca Maxima, and, indeed, antedated the Roman period altogether. (Fig. 248.) The enormous stones employed in its construction, and its great extent, display, even in this primitive age, that marked inclination for works of general usefulness which distinguished the people of Italy above all others of antiquity.
Of the long-forgotten cities, discovered in the present century by their walls, little else remains than extensive cemeteries, which, as repeatedly happens among the ruined places of the earth, have outlasted by more than two thousand years the dwellings of the living. The streets and buildings of these settlements, already in ruins under the Romans, have disappeared almost without a trace; while the monuments of the dead are so well preserved as frequently to give information concerning even the domestic architecture of their builders. By far the greater number of the tombs were tumuli, conical hills of earth, which generally, as in Lydia, were elevated upon a low cylinder and reveted by an outer course of stone. These have now almost all been reduced to the appearance of natural mounds. Their dimensions in some instances are almost as great as those of the smaller Egyptian pyramids. The base of the monument at Poggio Gajella, near Chiusi, formerly falsely held to be the tomb of Porsena, measures 256 m. in its circumference, while that at Monteroni, between Rome and Civita Vecchia, is 195 m. These gigantic foundations at times bore several cones. This appears to have been the case with the so-called tomb of Cucumella at Vulci, where two tall tower-like elevations still remain, which doubtless served as substructures for the terminating piers. The cippus may be imagined to have been analogous to the upper members of the tombs in Lydia, or, perhaps, to have resembled a pear-shaped capital, like the fragment found near the ruins of the so-called tomb of Pythagoras, or the imitations upon terra-cotta reliefs—similar to the cone which so generally terminated Roman tholos roofs. When several cones were placed upon one base, the angle of elevation was made steeper, as may probably have been the case with the tomb of Porsena at Clusium, the description of which is given by Pliny (xxxvi. 3) after Varro. If the tombs called those of the Horatii and Curiatii at Albano, which display many Etruscan reminiscences, be compared with this account, it is possible to present a restoration of the structure, correct in at least its principal aspects. Upon the corners of the triply stepped, diminishing substructure stood twelve cones, the thirteenth being in the centre of the upper terrace. (Fig. 249.)
The fundamental idea of the Etruscan tombs was not alone the creation of a monument which, covering the remains and protecting them from desecration, should plainly mark the place of interment, but the survivors sought, at the same time, to provide a room in which the dead might dwell in a manner corresponding to their circumstances during life. This conception was foreign to the Greeks, who seldom employed burial chambers of great size; but it was prevalent among the Egyptians, Persians, Lycians, and other nations of antiquity, though not by them carried out so logically as by the Etruscans, who usually placed the bodies upon stone benches, shaped like a bed, as if sleeping. Sarcophagi, when existing at all, appear to have been added upon further use of the sepulchre. It is thus, for instance, with the tomb of Veii—of which Fig. 246, at the head of this section, gives an inner view—with the tomb called that of Regulini-Galassi at Cære, and with numerous other sepulchres discovered in various cemeteries, notably of Southern Etruria. There, however, the chambers have mostly proved to have been plundered in former centuries.
The dwelling-rooms represented are as diverse as those of the living must naturally have been. No great width of these spaces was possible, because of the imposed weight of the tumulus; and the apartments consequently became narrow passages, ceiled by stone lintels, by blocks leaning against each other as a gable, or by the gradual approach of the horizontal courses by the projection of each over that beneath it. Examples of all these methods are provided by the tombs of Alsium, the present Monteroni; and the before-mentioned Regulini-Galassi tomb of Cære, the present Cervetri. The latter, so called after its discoverers, has furnished numerous treasures to the Etruscan Museum of the Vatican; it consisted of a corridor separated by a wall into compartments, with rock-cut lateral chambers of oval plan.
When the burial-chamber was a grotto—that is to say, was wholly excavated from the native rock—a greater width could be obtained. The ceiling was then carved, either to the outline of a low vault, as in the Campana tomb at Veii, or, more commonly, in imitation of the beams of a wooden ceiling. In the latter case various forms appear; for small inner chambers a simple horizontal ceiling sufficed, and a simple cross-timbering, overlaid with boards, was chosen as a pattern. The spacious vestibules frequently have an inclined roof, when ridge-beams, rafters, and the slats laid upon them are carefully and truthfully imitated. (Fig. 250.) A noteworthy example at Corneto (Fig. 255) shows in its outer room a plain imitation of the Italian atrium, or court, of the kind termed by Vitruvius cavædia displuviata. It is roofed by four main beams, laid diagonally and inclined outward, which support the framework of a middle orifice for light and air, and shed the water without instead of within. From this instance it appears that the fundamental idea of the chief sepulchral chamber was the atrium, which was the common gathering-place of the Italian house, as was the peristyle of the Greek; while the inner chambers represented the various rooms.
This imitation of an Etruscan dwelling—a remarkable counterpart, in architectural respects, to the copies of the exterior of wooden houses in the Lycian rock-cut tombs—was further carried out by a corresponding ornamentation of the rooms. The couches hewn from the rock, upon which the bodies rested, were at times a close imitation of cushions and pillows; the supports beneath were sculptured like bedsteads, while stone easy-chairs and footstools stood near to increase the apparent comfort. The apertures in the wall which separates the two spaces are reproductions of the framework of doors and windows. (Fig. 251.) The sides of the chambers are stuccoed with plaster of Paris, and covered with cheerful paintings, illustrating feasts, dances, sacred festivals, and games. Every conceivable variety of household utensils hang upon the walls or stand leaning against them, with great numbers of the well-known painted vases and other works of pottery. These objects, when not provided in reality, are imitated in stucco-relief and brilliantly painted, as in a tomb at Cervetri (Fig. 252), where walls and piers are covered with the representations of familiar household articles and weapons.
Although the tumuli were the more common funeral monuments, there were parts of Etruria, among the Apennines, where the limited extent of the level ground offered no spacious cemetery for the mounds, and where rocky mountains and abrupt cliffs led to a different form of sepulchre. A façade was cut upon the background provided by nature, where the appearance of a dwelling could be imitated with little expenditure of labor. The most numerous examples of these fronts are in the cemeteries of Castel d’Asso, near Viterbo. The forms are plain, and not particularly characteristic; a blind niche, the only architectural feature of the lower surface, was substituted for a door, the real entrance being through an insignificant shaft beneath the earth; and the façade was terminated by a complicated cornice—a confused mass of roundlets, cyma-mouldings, and rectangular bands, almost without projection. A stairway was often cut upon one or both sides of the tomb, leading to a platform or to other sepulchres situated upon a higher level.
Fig. 252.—Interior of a Tomb at Cervetri.
More remarkable than these monuments at Castel d’Asso are the rock-cut façades of Norchia, to the west of Viterbo, upon which are imitated the fronts of temples. The four columns or pilasters, now destroyed, were placed wide apart, according to the proportions of the Tuscan order. The entablature consists of a narrow epistyle and a frieze decorated with clumsy triglyphs, or rather diglyphs, with pointed trunnels under the regula, above which follows a weak cornice with dentils. The gable is still more peculiar. Its outer ends curl into a volute, with a Gorgoneion in its centre, which originally served as a base for the acroteria; the triangle is filled with reliefs. The whole front gives the impression of a barbarous mixture of indigenous elements with Grecian forms, ill understood and roughly rendered. (Fig. 253.)
Fig. 253.—Temple Tomb at Norchia.
These remains are interesting, but elements seem to have crept in which could not originally have belonged to the Etruscan style, and the façades of Norchia can hence be deemed of but secondary importance in the study of the temple structures. The plan of these was quite different from that of the Doric temple. Instead of the length being at least double the width of the front, as in Greece, the breadth was here to the length as five to six. The cella did not form a centre around which stood the columns, but it entirely occupied the rear half of the area, while the front remained open as a columned porch. Three cellas, with the images of nearly related deities, were usually grouped together, the middle one being the largest, and also of the greatest hieratic importance. In some instances rows of columns were ranged upon the two long sides of a cella; but the rear wall was always bare. All artistic effect was here abandoned, and the building was, on this account, often so placed as to abut immediately against an enclosing rampart, or against a natural cliff.
The plan and general arrangement were thus entirely different from those of the Greek temple. But the same thing is by no means to be said in regard to the architectural details and members of the building. The Etruscan column was closely allied to the Doric, and greatly resembled it, in spite of some marked variations arising from the lingering influence of the original timbered construction, and the inferior perception of artistic proportions. The Etruscan shaft, in contrast to the Doric, had a base consisting of a circular plinth and a tore, both of equal height. The capital was formed of three parts, equally high, of which the two upper, the echinos and abacus, were similar to the Doric. The third beneath—the necking of the column—which, in the Greek prototype, was divided from the shaft only by slight incisions or an apophyge, was in this separated by a roundlet; what in Greek architecture was based upon technical necessities, in Etruria became an unmeaning decoration. The shaft, apparently not channelled, rose in a lightness akin to the Ionic, tapering to three quarters of its lower diameter, and reached a height of seven diameters. The unusually wide distance between the columns—seven times the lower diameter of the shaft—in contrast to that in the intercolumniation of the Doric style, which rarely equalled two diameters, had its origin in the light wooden beams, which did not require such frequent and powerful supports as did the stone epistyle of the Greeks.
The entablature consisted of wooden epistyle beams placed one over another, fastened together by iron clamps, in at least two courses. From the text of Vitruvius—from whom the entire description must be taken, since, on account of the wooden beams, there are no remains of Etruscan temples—we cannot learn whether these smooth layers took the place of both architrave and frieze, or whether the upper member resembled the Doric frieze with triglyphs. From a remark of this writer, the former appears more probable, as many epistyle timbers being fastened one above another as the size of the building seemed to require; moreover, notwithstanding the Hellenic influence, triglyphs were not always introduced into the Roman Tuscan order. The arrangement of the roof rafters was doubtless such that their support upon the beams of the epistyle beneath was hidden, and perhaps rendered more solid by mortising or dovetailing. Upon the longer sides the roof projected considerably, fully one quarter of the height of the columns. By this means the size of the gable was decidedly increased. These gables may have been decorated with sculptural ornament in the tympanon, of clay or bronze, and with acroteria, as may be gathered from several notices, as well as from the rock-tombs of Norchia. Concerning these decorations Vitruvius is silent; but they could not have altered the heavy, low, and clumsy character of which he complains, and which is apparent in the restorations that have been made according to his theory. (Fig. 254.) The Etruscan temple could not become really monumental so long as it retained the wooden construction in its most essential constituents, and this seems never to have been given up in the entablature, even when the direct Grecian influence first made itself felt among the Romans. How this ultimately changed the fundamental architectural forms of Central Italy will be explained in the section upon Roman building, which united the traditions of Etruscan and Hellenic art.
Fig. 254.—Elevation of the Etruscan Temple according to
Vitruvius.
One of the chief features of the Etruscan or primitive Italian dwelling-house, the inner court, has already been mentioned in the consideration of the tombs. As in Hellenic architecture, so here this formed the central point, the chief space of the dwelling, around which were grouped the ceiled chambers, subordinate in dimensions and in importance. As the court was intended to be the chief gathering-place, a partial covering could not have sufficed in these northern Apennines, as did the Grecian peristyle; for continued rain, snow, and piercing winter frost were not so rare here as in the lands upon the Kephissos and Meander. The central aperture was diminished, and the effect of storms or cold more completely excluded. The Italian atrium, or cavædium, acquired thus a form essentially different from the Grecian court. If the aperture open to the sky were reduced to a small orifice for light and air, only large enough to carry off the smoke from the hearth and provide sufficient illumination, columnar supports would not be needed, the rafters being inclined outward, and framed into the square of the opening, as is conspicuously the case in the tomb at Corneto (Fig. 255), and as is also described by Vitruvius (vi. 3). Vertical props obstructing the space would be the less necessary, inasmuch as the dimensions of the court were small, on account of the lower temperature of the region. The Italian court thus differed from that of Greece by an entire absence of columns, as well as by the outward inclination of the roof. The latter peculiarity had the advantage that, notwithstanding the restriction of the central aperture, more light was admitted, the slanting rays of the sun falling high upon the walls; while, on the other hand, the interior of the house was free from the objectionable rain-drip, and, by covering the orifice in bad weather or at night, could be entirely isolated and protected. A remarkable copy of a roof upon an Etruscan clay sarcophagus (Fig. 256) shows the outward aspects of the dwellings of Central Italy, as the tomb at Corneto (Fig. 255) does the interior. The roof of the atrium, rising like a clere-story, inclined outward, while the covering of the chambers surrounding this space carried the drip still farther from the central aperture. The practical sense of the Italians was thus expressed, as opposed to the more cheerful and elevated ideals of form among the Greeks. These constructive advantages were attained, however, at the cost of that artistic, or at least tasteful, development of the whole which was characteristic of the Greeks, even when striving mainly after public usefulness or private comfort.
The remaining monuments of Etruria are almost entirely limited to tombs, among which it is not possible to recognize progressive stages of architectural design. Still it is evident that examples like the Regulini-Galassi tomb of Cære, which shows a most primitive covering of the chambers, and that of Alsium, or the Campana tomb at Veii, must belong to an earlier period than do those sepulchres in which the imitation of a dwelling-house, particularly in regard to the roof-timbering, shows an advanced intelligence and great technical skill. This skill is equally evident in the decorative members: pilasters before the piers, the carvings of the coffin-benches, and utensils upon the walls, with Hellenic features of a late and advanced period. A further division of Etruscan monuments into chronological periods is not possible; it is only to be concluded that the most primitive are less ancient than has usually been supposed, and are probably to be referred to the seventh century B.C., while the later and more perfected tombs may date from 250 to 150 B.C.
The numerous sculptural productions of Etruria may be better grouped. They are preserved in the Gregorian Museum of the Vatican, the British Museum, the earlier Campana collection in the Louvre, and special collections in various towns in Tuscany, particularly at Perugia. Others are scattered among the many museums of Europe. As the practical character of the Italians might lead us to expect, the greater part of these works consist of utensils and implements; those which bear the stamp of the greatest antiquity belonging almost exclusively to this class. The earliest period may be called the decorative, in which art was employed only for the ornamentation of useful articles. The most ancient specimens of this handiwork are those in the British Museum, found in the Grotto dell’ Iside of Vulci, and those in the Gregorian Museum of the Vatican, from the Regulini-Galassi tomb at Cære. The material is gold, silver, and bronze—occasionally amber and ivory; the objects are ornaments, such as breastplates, ear-rings, bracelets of gold wire and thinly beaten gold; also golden and amber necklaces, silver bowls, candelabra, kettles, tripods, couches, censers, and shields of bronze. All these are evident imitations of imported wares. The beaten figures of the breast ornaments remind one of the vessels excavated at Nineveh, Cyprus, and Mykenæ; the decorations of the silver bowls are more like the discoveries in Cyprus and Phœnicia; the bulb-like candelabra are similar to the Cyprian bronze utensils, and also to the seven-armed candlestick of the Temple of Jerusalem. Having already designated the vessels of Nineveh and those of Mykenæ as of Phœnician workmanship, and the Egyptianized ivoryware found upon the Tigris as having been brought into Mesopotamia by the Phœnicians as an article of trade, there can be no hesitation in referring the objects discovered in Etruria to the same origin. The beaten work in sheet-metal was among the best-executed productions of the Phœnicians, and among their most important articles of commerce; and intercourse between the Phœnicians and the Etruscans is known to have been active. Through this current of trade must also have come the vials and alabasters with Egyptian hieroglyphics and symbols; the gilded bronze birds with the pshent upon their heads, like those from the Grotto dell’ Iside; and the beetle-shaped bodies of clay, like the scarabæus, found in different places, for the Etruscans had no direct intercourse with Egypt. It is possible, however, that some of the objects which bear the characteristic forms of those countries are to be regarded as Etruscan manufactures, adhering closely to the imported patterns.
The era next following is distinguished as being emancipated from the earlier dependence upon the East, the Asiatic influence being gradually replaced by that of Hellas. Here may be mentioned the half-mythical report that, about 650 B.C., the Corinthian artists Eucheir, Diopos, and Eugrammos—whose names, as personification of handiwork in art, give little confidence—emigrated to Italy and there introduced sculpture. Though this may be taken to indicate an active artistic impulse, it cannot alone explain the great and decided advance that we find. In Southern Etruria monumental sculpture must early have attained a certain importance, since Tarquinius Priscus ordered from Vulca, or Vulcanius of Veii, a statue of the Capitoline Jupiter, and a quadriga for the gable ridge of his temple. The material for such colossal works was terra-cotta with a painting, perhaps monochromatic; at least, the nude parts of the image of Jupiter were repeatedly tinted with a red color. The roughness of such conventionalized work can hardly be conceived; the trunk, in a sitting figure, was not detailed; the extremities, on the contrary, had all the ugliness of realism; the head was sharply individualized, verging upon portraiture. As the oldest example of this treatment of the head may be mentioned the bust found in the Grotto dell’ Iside at Vulci (Fig. 257), which shows, at the same time, that the germ of that specific Etruscan motive—the conception of the individual, to the neglect of the general or ideal—existed even in the period of dependence upon Asiatic influence. This characteristic Etruscan formation of the head, though in a less artistic and more superficial style, is also shown in the so-called canopi of Chiusi—jugs with portrait heads upon the lids. These are distantly related to the Egyptian jars of the kind, but show scarcely a trace of the early conventional influence of ideal Greek sculpture; the heads, of extreme rudeness, are yet sharp and hard in modelling; coarse caricatures of the round skull and low, retreating forehead, which yet betray a certain observation of nature.
Fig. 257.—Bust from the Grotto dell’ Iside in Vulci.
Greek influence is first apparent, though still overbalanced by native individualization and realistic elements, in a somewhat later sarcophagus of terra-cotta, found in Cære, now one of the chief treasures of the Campana collection in the Louvre. (Fig. 258.) The sarcophagus itself shows a draped couch with technical and ornamental details similar to those found upon the furniture of Assyrian, Xanthian, and ancient Greek reliefs, and particularly upon archaic vase-paintings. A man and woman of life-size, leaning with their left elbows upon leathern cushions, form the lid. If, at first sight, this group has a somewhat frightful and repellent character, not felt in the most shocking distortions of primitive art, the cause lies in its prosaic realism, strikingly heightened by color. Notwithstanding many failures in point of detail, the effect of life was given by the artist without additions or idealizations. Rather inclined to caricature—that is, to the exaggeration of individual characteristics—the Etruscan artist sensibly failed in the reproduction of the head, because wanting in that training in fundamental correctness, through the canonical formation of a true type, which preceded the Grecian perfection. The representation of the individual, instead of being the first aim, should have been left to the last, and it was on this account that the skulls were deformed by various peculiar defects, while the eyes and mouth were drawn upward in a manner that is natural only to the Mongolian race. The same is true in regard to the terra-cotta reliefs of this period, in which the striving after action and naturalness of appearance caused an excessive restlessness in all the motions of the dislocated arms and hands, particularly evident in the ivory reliefs upon a number of caskets.
Fig. 258.—Sarcophagus of Terra-cotta from Cære.
(Louvre.)
Sculpture in marble at this period, about 550 to 300 B.C., was less developed; single archaic reliefs in this material—of which Southern Etruria offers but few—appear flat, and entirely under the influence of painting. The inadequacy of the artistic ability of this time is shown, for example, in a relief of Chiusi, representing the lamentation for the dead, where expression of sorrow is combined with caricatured individual features, very rude in drawing and form. (Fig. 259.)
The bronze-work, which is closely connected with the terra-cotta work, was of greater importance, and betrays a more decided and enduring Phœnician influence than do the terra-cotta statues. This is shown in the beaten bronzes, thin plates of which were used to overlay wooden forms. The most important example, the remains of a chariot found at Perugia, is preserved in the Glyptothek and Antiquarium at Munich. The representations of a sea-horse, a woman with fins, sphinxes, and a man who holds or strangles two lions, give evidence rather of Oriental than of Hellenic prototypes. The uncertainty in form and proportions, the ungainliness of the figures, and the awkwardness of the entire composition are in no wise compensated by the careful execution of the finely engraved details to be seen only upon close inspection. A tripod, found at the same time in Perugia, also now in Munich, shows a certain advance. Its three sides have representations of Hercules, and the Italian Juno Sospita, with the so-called Bœotian shield and pointed shoes, in somewhat higher beaten reliefs, very carefully engraved. This tripod is distinguished from the preceding examples as being the work of a more skilful artist, but differs little, or perhaps not at all, in point of age. The upper part of this vessel, now lacking, was mostly of bronze casting; the borders of the seat and the ends of the shafts upon the Perugian chariot were decorated with statuettes of solid metal; but these, as well as the handles upon utensils, seem to have been mere artisan work, not unlike the ornaments upon the handles, the furniture, chariots, etc., shown by the reliefs of Nineveh.
Works in bronze of considerable size must have been numerous at that period, as, in 260 B.C., Volsinii alone was in possession of two thousand bronze statues; but only a single example remains of well-attested Etruscan origin, the Capitoline Wolf (Fig. 260); probably the same which, soon after 300 B.C., was consecrated in Rome under the Ruminal fig-tree. It is a hollow cast, which, with great hardness and carefulness of treatment, gives the well-understood character of this animal excellently, almost to the point of caricature. It well illustrates the peculiarities of Etruscan art above described, inasmuch as it sacrifices to realism all artistic beauty. The chimera of Arezzo in Florence, and a griffin in Leyden, are similar in style; but, notwithstanding their Etruscan inscriptions, it is doubtful whether they are of Tuscan workmanship.
Here should be mentioned the bronze utensils ornamented by drawings—sgraffiti—particularly the mirrors, generally in the form of plates, one side of which had a polished surface, while the other was engraved. The handles upon these either represented figures like caryatides, or, more commonly, ended in a deer’s head. Toilet cistas, a further variety of these works, were of cylindrical form, usually with the claws of animals for feet, and a group of human figures upon the cover as a handle; but these, on account of their engravings, should rather be considered in the section upon painting, and are mentioned here merely because of the accompanying castings. Only a small part of them belongs to the archaic period.
About 300 B.C. the art of Etruria appears to have reached its highest point of independence and perfection, which, in sculpture, is illustrated by the terra-cotta sarcophagus of Cære in the Louvre, and by the Capitoline Wolf. The old ignorance of proportions had disappeared, and a tolerable correctness was attained; the realistic tendency no longer struggled with unpliant forms, as in the former period, when it might have been likened to the lisping and stammering of children. Yet the Etruscan artists never succeeded in harmonious combinations, or in mastery and surety of form. The stream of Grecian art, long restrained, or, so far as possible, turned aside, at length overcame all obstacles. Up to this time the taste of the Etruscans for the archaic and the archaistic, aided by the importations of that character, had given to their art an antiquity of aspect in form and in painting far beyond its true age. But when political Etruria ceased to exist, as its walls were destroyed at the opening of the cities by the Romans, Grecian art, of the period of the Diadochi, entered from the coasts of Magna Græcia.
This is first noticeable in the sculptured lids of the sarcophagi of this Hellenistic period. That of Cære, mentioned above, was executed in almost entire independence of the influence of Greece: a copy was made directly from life, with a prosaic realism which, without restraint or culture, and with no feeling for the beautiful, was still fascinating from its naturalness. In later times this unpoetical sobriety and truthfulness to individual peculiarities still existed; but they were affected by Hellenic forms and formulas, which, being without organic unity or intrinsic significance, and void of capacity for development, were merely an exterior varnish. This period is most clearly represented by the lids of three sarcophagi carved in alabaster and a soft stone. Of these, one bears a reclining image with five statues in the full round at the head and feet (Fig. 261); the two others, from Vulci, represent a man and woman upon the marriage bed, wrought in high-relief. The portraiture of the chief personages is by no means limited to the heads. Apart from the accessories, chosen from the purely human sphere of daily existence, the position and modelling of the nude portions of the body were evidently taken from living models. The secondary figures and the drapery show a decided Grecian influence, in visible contrast to the inherent realism. Organic connection and unity of style are wanting, and this want leaves it to be regretted that Greek forms should ever have found admission into Etruria, for by them the native tendency towards the realistic was checked, while the originality sacrificed was not compensated by a merely external Greek formalism, never essentially understood.
Fig. 261.—Etruscan Stone Sarcophagus.
This condition of things is most strikingly exemplified by the reliefs upon the two sarcophagi of Vulci, the lids of which have been referred to above. Upon the front of one is shown a wedding procession, and upon the end a funeral chariot drawn by mules, with the married pair seated under a canopy. In the arrangement and drapery they somewhat resemble Grecian sculptures, but the heads, especially of the important figures, are portraits, with traits of realistic coarseness in all the nude parts. Even in subject, as Brunn remarks, this naturalism is apparent. While the Greeks would have chosen to represent a mythological wedding like that of Heracles, Peleus, or Cadmus, and the Romans would have illustrated the bridal pair—in a conception more theological than mythological—by Victory, Juno, and Venus, with the Graces in their train, the Etruscans show the marriage in a literal manner, the united pair being followed by servants, with couch, sun-shade, wash-basin, crook, horn, flutes, and harp. In the reliefs upon the other sarcophagus the subjects selected offered no opportunity for purely Etruscan motives; battles of the Amazons, and heroic encounters of naked youths, on foot and upon horse, gave no scope to realistic treatment. They consequently appear almost entirely Greek, but clumsy and superficial, justifying, by the slavishness of their imitation and the weakness of their composition, the suggestion of Brunn, that the Etruscan artists not only made use of Hellenic designs as a kind of pattern-book, but, when they would illustrate some scene for which they had no complete guide, combined separate groups from different examples. In the steer seized by lions, and the horse lacerated by griffins, upon the small sides of the same sarcophagus, may be recognized not only Oriental conceptions, but an Asiatic treatment.
The terra-cotta sculptures of this period show the same Hellenic tendency, with, the same superficiality and relation to the late Greek degeneracy. Examples of this are to be found in the antefixes of a sarcophagus from Vulci, and some fine urns belonging particularly to Northern Etruria—Volterra, Clusium, and Perugia—which appear in tufa and travertine, and represent the latest period—150 to 100 B.C. Grecian legendary scenes have been observed upon earlier works, and afterwards they became more general; but a certain preference for particular and better known fables is evident, and native additions are easily recognized.
Not to speak of later examples in bronze, and the engraved drawings upon cistas and mirrors, which will be treated of below, the most important statue is the so-called Mars from Todi, now in the Vatican museum. According to its inscription, it is Umbrian, but it is properly to be considered here, because for the too limited term Etruscan art might well be substituted Italian, or at least Central Italian. Vigorous in all its details, and betraying throughout the later Hellenic style, the Mars is yet stiff, heavy, and without organic understanding. Similar to it are other figures of warriors; but the Boy with the Duck, in the museum at Leyden, in spite of the stiff and hard features, would, perhaps, not be recognized as Etruscan at all, were it not for the inscription upon his right leg, and the bulla upon his neck-band. The life-like statue of an orator in Florence might, in like manner, pass for Roman, were there not something in the head, and in the lame position of the legs, particularly hard and commonplace, a quality which, in the Roman works of this kind, is always tempered by some degree of heroic conception. The difference is less evident because the primitive art of the Romans and Etruscans was much the same, and the Greek influence the same in both, though this was earlier and more active in Rome.
The painting of Etruria naturally followed a process of development similar to that of the sculpture. In the earliest times it appears that painting was rare in comparison with the decorative works of beaten metal plate, and that the little there was followed Phœnician and Egyptian models, in so far, at least, as may be judged from the few utensils which have been found in the so-called Grotto dell’ Iside in Vulci. These are ornamented partly with painting, partly with colored enamel. This decorative and dependent period lasted at least until the beginning of the sixth century; and the Oriental tendency towards decoration was by no means lost with its transition into the independent monumental and realistic style, as is proved by the pictures of the Campana tomb at Veii, with their attenuated animal figures. But the obtrusive archaistic ornament upon the human figures began already to show the native realistic tendency, which obtained complete mastery in the two tombs of Corneto, called the Tomba del Morto, and Tomba delle Inscrizioni, of about the same date. A painting upon slabs of terra-cotta from Cære (Fig. 262) is perhaps still older. In the former examples, though known to be antique, the treatment was more archaistic than archaic, and the monstrous decorative style of Asia was apparent, like that upon ancient vase-paintings. But in the Cære slabs the fundamental principle was realistic imitation of the life. The influence of Hellenic art, increasing because of the importation of Greek vases, is first evident upon a number of clay figures from Cære. There is little unity in the subjects: they appear to be devotional and ceremonial rather than mythological, the demoniacal and funereal elements predominating. The colors are sombre, with no decided blue, red, or green; only brown, yellow, reddish brown, gray, and black were employed upon a white ground. No trace of shading is perceptible, and the drawing, with exception of the outline, is limited to the indication of the almond-shaped eyes, and to slight suggestions of the knees, elbows, and nails. The forms are heavy and without dignity, the motions stiff, and the step as though climbing, with the arms thrown violently upward, as if running in the greatest haste. Still, they give evidence of great observation of nature, with the avoidance of a systematic uniformity in drawing, motion, and gesture; but the imitation is hardly successful, though in the reclining figures, for which a living model was most easily obtained, there is a certain degree of truthfulness. In the picture from Cære the many-colored altar, with its peculiar top reminding one of the profiles of Castel d’Asso, is very characteristic. The wall-paintings in the older tombs of Corneto, already mentioned, are somewhat more advanced in regard to understanding of form and truthfulness in the expression of the heads; also in the soles of the feet being no longer so flatly set. At the same time, Grecian influence is very distinctly visible. One of these, the Tomba del Morto, represents a death-bed and its surroundings, with a group of dancers and drinkers; the other, the Tomba delle Inscrizioni, shows racing, boxing, wrestling, and preparations for a feast. A third sepulchre at Corneto, the so-called Tomba del Barone, is, perhaps, still further developed, with the strictness of the archaic Hellenic vase-painting. Youthful riders, men and women with bowls, and finely modelled garments are separated by small trees.
This archaic hardness was again modified in the next later group of four tombs: the Grotto delle Bighe, the Grotto del Citharedo, the Grotto Marzi, or del Triclinio, and the Grotto Querciola, mostly named from some chief motive of the representation within. The garments allow the outlines of the figure to be seen: the forms have become more slender, the position of the limbs, step, and action more correct; while the color, from the use of red and green, is brighter. Although the archaic tendency still prevails, as may be seen from the more marked Hellenic influence, a decided effort to develop the native realism is evident in the contemporary paintings from Chiusi, of the Tomba Ciaja, the Tomba di 1833, and the Tomba François. These certainly do not show the fine modulation and clearness of the Corneto paintings, but, instead, a greater variety, originality, and truth. In the Tomba di 1833, for example, the eye appears drawn in profile. These works are the perfection of the second period, the time of independent realistic development, dating from the fifth to the fourth century B.C.
The last phase of Etruscan painting, when the Hellenic influence predominated as largely as in the sculptural works of the third and second centuries B.C., commenced with the extensive adoption of the Greek myths, previously but seldom employed. This epoch is illustrated by coins, occasionally found in tombs, which still show the native naturalistic traits, and a certain quaint sobriety not overcome by the exaggeration of gesture. The effect is far more picturesque than that of the older works, from a very moderate but still appreciative use of light and shade. The close of the period is marked by a novelty of subject, the introduction of Italian legends, such as the half-historical personifications of Mastarna (or Servius Tullius) and Cælius Vibenna. The art, which, more or less substantially, outlived the independence of its narrow home, thus acquired a Roman character.
Numerous and varied products testify to the Etruscan industry in artistic manufactures; the bronze utensils in the tombs, with sgraffiti, or engraved drawings, bore the same historical relation to ancient paintings that copper-plate engraving does to the modern. Of the thousand hand-mirrors known, only a few belong to the earlier period; but in the subjects of the more developed archaic examples, Greek character predominates. The frequently recurring representations of Bacchus and Eros and of the Judgment of Paris remind one of the festival and morning toilets; Ariadne and the female deities suggest womanly customs. A great portion of the Greek mythology is illustrated upon the mirrors of the third period, which show extreme Hellenic influence. Most of these productions are naturally mere handiwork, and artistically valueless; but single specimens, from their extraordinary beauty, might pass for Grecian work did not the inscriptions and accessories, specifically Etruscan, like the bullæ, prevent this assumption. For example, the unequalled mirror, in which Semele embraces the youthful Dionysos in so charming a manner, represents the heroine in such noble proportions that it may, without hesitation, be reckoned among the most beautiful results of artistic industry. Similar in character are the engraved cistas, cylindrical toilet-cases, which illustrated Grecian myths, like those of Perseus and Prometheus, the Judgment of Paris, and the rites over the body of Patroclos, in a careful manner and with vigorous drawing, but not without the hardness peculiar to Etruscan composition. Italian myths also appear, like that of Æneas; and Latin inscriptions, as those upon the magnificent cista of Ficoroni, ornamented with illustrations of the legend of the Argonauts, show that this process of engraving was also employed with success by the early Romans.
A consideration of Etruscan art is important, because, without it, an understanding of Roman art is not possible, at least in the fields of architecture and sculpture. Up to a certain point of time, Roman art was entirely developed from Etruscan art, or, perhaps, went hand in hand with it, as will be more particularly shown in the following section. The subject should be more closely investigated, especially in the province of painting, with the hope that, from analogous illustrations, much which still remains dark in primitive Hellenic art may also be made clear.