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Fig. 139.—Persian Faience Plaque. (Robert Hoe, Jr., Coll.)
Fig. 139.—Persian Faience Plaque. (Robert Hoe, Jr., Coll.)

IT is unfortunate, considering the great importance of Persia in the history of ceramic art, that it should have been a debatable ground to travellers and ceramists. Of the extended influence of Persia upon neighboring countries there can be no doubt. The Arabs acquired from that people much of the knowledge which they subsequently brought to Europe, and which will be treated of more fully as Saracenic and Mauresque. Persia gave a language to the Mussulmans of{190} India, and supplied her with at least suggestions in the plastic art. Her art, in fact, spread far beyond the wide bounds of that empire, which extended from India on the east to the Mediterranean on the west, and from the Black Sea and Caucasian range on the north to the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. To have an exact knowledge of the problems with which we have now to deal, the several great revolutions recorded in the history of Persia may be briefly summarized. These changes were both religious and political in character. Beginning with Cyrus the Great, we find the empire as above described, about the year B.C. 559, when Media became tributary to Persia, into which other kingdoms were afterward merged in quick succession. The empire lasted until B.C. 331, when Alexander the Great included Persia in his grand series of Asiatic conquests. On Alexander’s death, when the tributaries of Macedonia were divided, Seleucus Nicanor obtained Persia for his share; and the Grecian dynasty lasted until the Parthians revolted, and met with such success that a Parthian dynasty was founded which lasted for nearly five hundred years. This brings us down to the year 229 of our era, when Artaxerxes headed a revolt and laid the foundation of the second Persian empire. This is known as the Sassanian Dynasty, which held the sovereignty until the incursion of the Arabs, more than four hundred years later. Persian independence was reasserted after the lapse of a second period of four hundred years, and lasted until Genghis Khan and Tamerlane successively brought it under Mogul domination. The succeeding wars with Afghans, Turks, and Russians need not here be detailed.

The two great religious revolutions were occasioned by the adoption of the doctrines of Zoroaster and Mohammed. The first of these appears to have suddenly emerged from the comparative obscurity of the court of Bactria—a country situated upon the eastern confines of ancient Persia—and to have led the Persians to renounce their gross idolatry. The leading tenets of his creed were the existence of a supreme being, eternity, and the contending principles Ormuzd and Ahriman, good symbolized by light and evil by darkness. The never-ceasing contention between these two opposite principles is often represented by a bull and a lion in conflict. The cypress was Zoroaster’s emblem. This religion took a deep hold upon the Persians, and the first serious shock which it sustained was from the religion founded{191} by Mohammed in the wilds of Arabia Petræa. Of the two Mussulman sects, Schiites and Sunnites, created by the dissensions following upon the Prophet’s death, as to the choice of a successor, the Persians preferred the former, and are believers in Ali. The Turks, on the other hand, are Sunnites, believers in the legitimate succession of Abubeker, Omar, and Osman. Propagandism by the help of the sword being the privilege and virtue of the believers in the Prophet, it is not astonishing that Turk and Persian should have met in the argument of battle.

Coming next to the geographical position of Persia, it intercepted, in its ancient extent, all communication between East and West. The vast extent of territory owning its sway, stretching nearly three thousand miles east and west, and two thousand miles north and south, must needs be traversed by travellers between Europe and the extreme East. Long before navigators had found the ocean highway round the Cape, Persia received all the traffic from India, China, and Japan passing through the Persian Gulf to Europe.

Let us now take in all that has here been stated, at one glance, and we shall see clearly why Persian ceramic art has been viewed with doubt. Overrun successively by Greeks, Parthians, Arabs, Moguls, and Turks; widening and contracting its boundaries as the tide of conquest ebbed and flowed; lending to India, and probably borrowing from it; taking part, at one time, in the Zoroastrian worship of fire, and, at another, in the Mohammedan praise of Allah; connected, through trade, with the far East on the one hand and with Europe on the other, Persia was pre-eminently a country to confuse the investigator by the mingled types, symbols, and ideas which it derived alike from conqueror and trader. One fact of peculiar interest remains to be added. When, in the middle of the thirteenth century, Hulaku Khan came to Persia, he brought among his Mogul followers a number of Chinese artisans. The Mogul territory touched the western boundaries of China, so that it is quite possible, that to the specimens of Chinese porcelain brought to Persia by sea may have been added a number of Chinese artists and potters arriving with the Moguls by land. In view of these facts it is not difficult to account for the prevalence in Persia of imitations of the Chinese, nor is it altogether incomprehensible that a question should have been raised whether what is called Persian porcelain is not in reality Chinese.{192}

Persian decoration is rich in flowers (Fig. 140), for which that people entertained a liking amounting almost to a passion. The tulip meant love. Of the other symbolical forms found on pottery, the lion and bull and the cypress have already been explained. The sun was the Zoroastrian emblem of divinity, and the royal arms consisted of the lion couchant, with its head turned toward the rising sun.

The various styles of decoration may all be qualified by one word—conventional. Although on the earlier pieces the human figure is found, with the Mussulman sway it disappears, to make way for hybrid monsters resembling the half-human beings of mythology—compounds of women and birds, men with horns and tails, like the satyrs of Greece, and numberless other supernatural monsters illustrative of the artists’ compromise with the Mohammedan behest forbidding the representation of the human form or of living beings. Even the greatly loved flowers suffer in both tint and form from the artists of Persia. Colors were used in a precisely similar spirit. Nature was sought for suggestion, not for imitation. The question of color was decided solely with an eye to effect; and if a violet horse should harmonize with its surroundings better than a black, gray, sorrel, or bay, the fact that in{193} nature no such color is found on horses was not held to be a legitimate objection to its use. In Persia, therefore, we are presented with a peculiar phase of art. Nature, being followed neither in form nor color, nor in the suggestive manner of the Japanese, which finds the highest art in the combination of resemblance and imagination, is relegated to the position of a promptress, and not of a guide. In richness and harmonious blending of arbitrary colors, the Persian artist realized his highest dream, and never forgot that, no matter what natural object might enter into his design, the ornamentation of pottery was surface decoration, and nothing more.

Before proceeding to the usual divisions hitherto observed, there is one point demanding special attention, viz., the Persian reflet métallique, or metallic lustre. The use of metallic-lustre pigments was, as has been already stated, known in the Balearic Islands, and gave the original majolica its distinctive appearance. Long before that date the process was known to the Persians in connection with silicious glaze. The metallic lustre has also been found on Arabian specimens. It is in Persia, however, that we must, in all likelihood, look for its origin. The date of its invention cannot be fixed with even an approximation to precision. The probability is that it was never very extensively used, and the specimens obtained are mostly fragmentary. Many of these are from the ruins of Rhages, a city which stood about seventy miles south of the Caspian Sea. Earthquake and conquest successively laid this city in ruins, and each time that it was rebuilt its limits became more contracted. It was finally destroyed during the Mogul irruption under Hulaku Khan, in 1250, and it is from the ruins beyond the city of that era that the above mentioned fragments have been taken. In fixing the origin, therefore, of metallic lustre, the latest date would be six hundred and twenty-seven years ago, the most remote perhaps over two thousand. The metallic-lustre pigments were made use of as late as the time of Shah Abbas, who reigned from 1555 to 1628, and whom Jacquemart calls the “Louis XIV. of Iran.{194}”

POTTERY.

Chemical experiments have shown that in one kind of Persian paste there is a large preponderance of silex, that when fired for a certain time the result is a faience, and that a continued exposure to the kiln reduces it to a partially translucent body resembling porcelain. Some of the tiles show silica ranging about ninety per cent., and the remaining fraction consisting of alumina and iron, lime, magnesia, and potash. By comparison with the porcelain standard adopted in the table (Book I., Chapter iii.), it will be seen that this paste differs in the greater proportion of silica and in the presence of iron. It differs from earthen-ware, on the other hand, by its containing magnesia and potash. The faience of Persia must, therefore, be treated with extreme caution; and the authorities must be consulted with care, since what one calls pottery, another treats of as soft porcelain. Of that coming most nearly to what we understand by the word “faience”—that is, a perfectly opaque ware—some of the specimens are glazed, and others are covered with only a thin lustre or varnish. Very fine examples are found in the wall-tiles taken from the different mosques. The same style of ornament was applied{195} to these and to vases, and its general character has already been designated. Arabesques and flowers—some imitations of the natural and others altogether conventional—are profusely spread upon both, with a boundless wealth of rich color. The forms assumed by the various vessels differ very widely from each other. Cups, open dishes with rims of varying breadth, and a number of water-vessels illustrate certain manners of the Persians. The color and ornamentation are distinctive. The favorite ground colors were the blues of copper and cobalt, and these alternate with red, and yellow tinged with red. The ornamentation is very often white. The Mosque of Sultaneah has already been described (see page 39). In others the colors are reversed, i. e., white is used for the ground and blue for the decoration. At times we see the Persian love of the chase triumphing over the Mohammedan prohibition of the employment of animal figures, by the introduction of hares or gazelles, generally upon grounds of light shades of green and blue. Some of the most remarkable plaques belong to the same period, and in both the earlier and later examples the coloring is exceedingly rich and effective. What the latter lose in simplicity they gain in brilliancy. Some pieces, apparently of great age, have a close resemblance to the céladon of China. The vases a reflet métallique are either blue, or white with yellow ornamentation. The art of applying the lustre seems to have disappeared about the middle of the seventeenth century. The tiles of this kind date mostly from the time of the Mogul Dynasty. The larger plaques measure sometimes six feet by eight feet; the smaller tiles without inscriptions are star and cross shaped fitted together in a mosaic.

PORCELAIN.

Although the discussion was long maintained, whether or not Persia produced a true kaolinic porcelain, there seems to be no real ground for doubting that such was the case. That India produced porcelain we have already seen, and it becomes a question whether the art was not practised elsewhere in Central Asia. The evidence bearing upon{196} the point clearly shows that Persia possessed the materials for making a pure kaolinic porcelain. The presence of Chinese works and styles does not affect the question. These may either have been the work of Persian artists imitating Chinese models, or of Chinese artists working in Persian material. The Persians call porcelain tchini, a name clearly indicating that in one of the above ways they were indebted to the Chinese.

By reason of the qualities of the paste already noted, the classification of Persian porcelain is a matter of some difficulty. The analysis which could alone decide the class to which the specimens belong is in a great measure wanting. It may be inferred that two pieces, apparently distinct in composition, may be really identical, and representative merely of the successive changes effected by firing upon the silicious paste. The most ancient kind is not older than the Mussulman incursion. When subjected to a great heat it melts like glass.

What is called “soft porcelain” is not, properly speaking, a distinct variety. It differs from the others in decoration, but not to any perceptible extent in composition. The paste is very translucent, and the glaze even. The external decoration is frequently blue or a tint of mixed brown and yellow, upon which appear flowers and arabesques (Fig. 143). Cups and basins are the shapes most frequently occurring, and the first decorative feature is that the outside and inside are seldom alike. The latter may{197} be white, with copper-lust re decoration, and the outside may be in either of the two colors above mentioned. A style of decoration very widely followed consists of a series of holes cut in the paste round the rim of the basin or bowl, and filled in with the glaze. This method was adopted at a very early period, and reappears in the “grains of rice” work of China. A later specimen—probably not more than two hundred years old—of Persian “soft” porcelain has its upper and lower parts in blue and white, with lustred ornamentation.

Persian natural porcelain, about which writers have disputed, and called by the Persians tchini, is closely related to the Chinese. An entire class is characterized by its decoration of incised lines and blue painting under the glaze. The paste is somewhat coarse, and lacks cohesion. As to the antiquity of this quality, all that can be said is that it was produced a long time prior to the fifteenth century. Red and gold are seldom employed with blue, but rather characterize a distinct class. Green was much more indiscriminately employed, as, for example, with blue, brown, red, and gold. The céladons are to be distinguished from the Chinese, not by the color—for they show the beautiful old green of their Chinese counterparts—but by the design and form. All that remains to be added is, that, like every other people to whom the higher secrets of ceramic art were open, the Persians attached a very great value to the best works in both porcelain and pottery. The former is, in their literature, constantly associated with gold and other precious materials.{198}

BOOK III.—EUROPE.

CHAPTER I.

THE FOUNTAINS OF EUROPEAN ART.

WE now approach a point in our history which stands within sight both of the wonders of early Greece and of the beginnings in the Middle Ages of the best ceramic art of Europe. From Persia, as a centre, art travelled north and west by many devious routes ere it touched the European shores. But behind the Persian is the older civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, to whose glories it succeeded. We are thus once more brought back to Egypt and Egyptian influences. After spreading to the east they extended northward, and in Greece are met by others transmuted by a passage through Assyria and Phœnicia, but springing from the same prolific source on the banks of the Nile. Persia, after acquiring from Egypt’s eastern pupils her earliest knowledge, adapted the lessons thus derived to her own ideas, and spread it across the tracts already followed by others who had learned directly from her teachers. From both the south and east these lines of original and derivative art converged toward one point, the eastern shores and islands of the Mediterranean and Greece. To show how difficult{199} it is to disentangle the web of footprints, let us glance at Cyprus, as revealed to us by the discoveries of General Luigi Palma di Cesnola (Fig. 145), and described in his work upon “Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples.” The record may be read by all who visit the Metropolitan Museum of New York. We choose Cyprus because it was virtually the meeting-place of the East with the West. Assyrian, Egyptian, Phœnician, and Greek influences contend for the mastery.

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Fig. 145.—General Luigi Palma di Cesnola.
Fig. 145.—General Luigi Palma di Cesnola.

There is no certainty as to the derivation of the first settlers. They may have been either Phœnicians or Cilicians, and thus only another branch of the great Semitic family to which the Phœnicians belonged. Or colonists may have arrived from Cilicia and Phœnicia at about the same time. There is less reason for believing that any settlers came from Egypt, although the first historical conquest of the{200} island was effected by the Egyptians. This event took place about B.C. 1440, during the reign of Thothmes III. How long it remained under Egyptian control does not exactly appear, but it next passed into the hands of the Tyrians at a date prior to B.C. 1000. It was next conquered by Sargon, King of Assyria, and when, about B.C. 600, Apries, King of Egypt, took Sidon, he included Cyprus in his conquest. Amasis, the successor and murderer of Apries, completed the work of the latter. The Cypriotes then turned for deliverance to Cambyses of Persia, and Cyprus became a dependency of the great eastern power. Again the island was shaken by revolt, and the greater part of its people joined the Ionians in an unsuccessful attempt to throw off the Persian yoke. The Athenians and Lacedæmonians, after taking a portion of Cyprus (B.C. 477), abandoned their conquests. Then came the rebellion of Evagoras, King of Salamis, whose father had been dispossessed by the Persians, the result of which was that Evagoras recovered his own kingdom, but the island still remained tributary to Persia. It then fell under the control of Alexander of Macedon, and was held by his generals for a few years after his death. Ptolemy Lagus, or Soter, again brought Cyprus under Egyptian rule, and lastly came the arms of all-conquering Rome. We need go no farther. We stand in Cyprus,{201} upon a battle-field crossed by the armies of every nation of antiquity with any claim to warlike renown, and find in it at once the theme of ancient poets and the prize of ancient warriors. So far we may travel in the track of war, but the history of art is affected less by the conquest of battle than by permanent occupancy and the more peaceful conquest of colonization. Thus we find Phœnician art leaving a deeper impress upon Cyprus than any other, and one to be detected even amidst the confusion of Semitic and Hellenic remains. This art developed, on the one hand, into something bearing a semblance of an independent Cypriote character, and, on the other, into a form more distinctively Greek. Phœnicia was the country in which the Assyrian and Egyptian elements of decorative art were combined, and being brought on the other side into contact with Greece, the history of Greek art is thus continued backward into a remote antiquity.

The early Phœnician settlers located themselves chiefly on the southern and eastern sides of the island; the Greeks chose the north and west. Both were evidently actuated by the same motive, viz., to give the preference to the localities nearest the land from which they had come. The Phœnicians founded Paphos, Amathus, and Citium; the Greeks founded Salamis, Curium, Neo-Paphos, and several other towns. Tencer and Agapenor, two of the Greek heroes from the Trojan war, settled in Cyprus, and the island is thus introduced into Grecian legend. As time passed, the Greek and Phœnician elements underwent a more or less complete amalgamation. The Greek language became the prevailing tongue, and the Phœnician religion became the common creed. Aphrodite, who sprung from the foam of the sea, and was wafted to the shore of Cyprus, was the{202} Tyrian Astarte, the Assyrian Mylitta. Her worship extended over the whole island, and was engaged in with all the licentious impurity of the Oriental original. Greece rose as Phœnicia declined, and her people spread beyond the limits of their ancestral settlements. One civilization rose upon the ruins of another, and died in its turn; and Cesnola found them piled one upon another in strata, to be opened up and read like the stony leaves of the geologist’s book.

That this is literally the case can be very easily shown. General di Cesnola began his excavations at Larnaca, on the southern shore of the island, or near the ancient Citium, or Kittim, a Phœnician city. Near this city have been found a number of terra-cotta statuettes, which General Cesnola ascribes to the fourth century before our era. He thinks they were imported from Greece. They were accompanied by others, poorly executed, and some figures suggestive of Phœnicia and Egypt. It was here that the vase, (Fig. 150, was discovered. Crossing the Santa Croce range, he found, at Dali, on the plain of Messaria, the necropolis of the Phœnician city Idalium. He began his excavations among the Phœnician tombs, and exhumed a great quantity of pottery of several shapes. The vases are of light-colored clay, and are variously decorated with geometric patterns and concentric circles in brown color. One of them (Fig. 148) has a Phœnician inscription, and all the others were evidently Phœnician. Above the tier of tombs from which these were taken, a second tier was discovered, of a different epoch, and containing objects of a totally different character. Earthen-ware gave place to glass in all the shapes found in Greek pottery, the amphora, lekythos, krater, kylix, and others. Many were of a formation so evidently late that the discoverer ascribes them to the Græco-Roman period. Here then, was Greek and Phœnician work reposing in juxtaposition. An explanation was found by returning to the Greek tomb which had{203} been first opened, and under it was discovered the continuation of those of the Phœnicians. The Greek Idalium had grown upon the ruins of a Phœnician predecessor, and hidden under the ashes of the one Cesnola found the necropolis of the other. On prosecuting his researches in the latter, the type of pottery again altered, and the decoration of concentric rings reappeared. At Alambra, west of Dali, he found a number of small clay images—horsemen, warriors, chariots, a representation of a procession, and vases of two kinds. He made excavations in five burying-grounds, all apparently belonging to the Phœnician Idalium; and from a mound in the same district he obtained a collection which, from the combination of Egyptian and Assyrian forms and decoration, may be assumed to contain some of the most ancient relics of Phœnician art. Two green-glazed bowls have Egyptian paintings, and the vases occasionally take the form of animals and birds.

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Fig. 150.—Assyro-Phœnician Vase, from Larnaca. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Museum.)
Fig. 150.—Assyro-Phœnician Vase, from Larnaca. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Museum.)

Striking eastward from Dali, the explorer reached Athieno, near the ancient Golgoi, and there came upon a necropolis and an ancient temple of Venus. The most remarkable fact concerning the statuary brought from this locality is that the lines of nationality are so broad and well defined. General Cesnola then determined to push his {204}explorations toward the East, and, after visiting Salamis, turned westward to Paphos, Neo-Paphos, and then northward to Soli and other places on the northern shore. Returning to the southern shore, a number of terra-cotta vases and figures of the Phœnician type and Egyptian green-glazed vessels were exhumed at Amathus. A statuette of Astarte and figures of Egyptian deities were found almost together. Lastly, General Cesnola visited Curium, a city said to have been founded by an Argive colony. There he found pottery of the usual mixed types, including vases, terra-cotta figures, and one large vase (Fig. 151), so strongly marked with Greek influences that he ascribes it to the earlier period of Greek art. Both General Cesnola and Mr. A. S. Murray think that it may have been taken to Curium from Greece. Its four handles, its great size, and its elaborate decoration make it unequalled among the vast number of Cypriote relics in the Metropolitan Museum.

In constructing a theory of the progression of Cypriote pottery it is necessary to examine closely the different styles of ornamentation. On some we find Assyrian symbols and characteristic styles of decoration; on others the figures are as evidently Egyptian. Thus the{205} archaic vase from Larnaca (Fig. 150) is just such a work as might be expected from the Phœnician founders of Kittim while still directly under the domination of Assyrian ideas. The pattern between the animals is distinctively Assyrian. In a similar manner the vase (Fig. 146) is decorated with an Egyptian figure, but in the subsidiary decoration—the plaited pattern on the sides and the concentric circles arranged vertically—there is nothing indicative of Egyptian influence. We see in it the work of a potter who combined an Egyptian suggestion with a more independent form of ornament. It has already been said that, of all the nations of antiquity, the Phœnicians are most strongly marked by influences emanating from Egypt, on the one hand, and from Assyria on the other. To this people, therefore, we may attribute the two vases last referred to.

It is also necessary to bear in mind that, while certain symptoms of independence on the part of Cypriote potters must be appreciated at their full value, there are no evidences of the potter’s art ever having developed among them to any great extent. It is possible that the effeminate, voluptuous nature of the people prevented the attainment of artistic superiority. It is also possible that their skill in working metal may have distracted their attention from clay. In either event we discover no well-defined gradation from the lower to the higher, such as we find in Greece. Cyprus may have been still wrapped in slumber, while Greece was striding forward in the full vigor of its young life. It may have been following its ancient models, while Greece was turning from the old to the new and original. It is difficult, therefore, to ascribe with precision the Cypriote pottery to any given age. A rule by which to determine such questions has been laid down in this way: vases painted with linear designs are the most ancient; then follow those with animal figures; lastly come those with human forms. Cypriote pottery makes the application of such a rule extremely hazardous and difficult. How apply it to the vase with vertical rings{206} and human form and head (Fig. 146)? The figure is Egyptian, and might, for that reason, carry us back to the conquest by Thothmes III., were it not that it represents the latest style of decoration according to the accepted rule, while the remainder of the decoration belongs to the earliest.

The practice of ornamenting with concentric rings is an application to pottery of a pattern borrowed from working in metal. Cyprus was famed for its copper, and, from the legendary age downward, exported armor and weapons of bronze. It is not singular, therefore, if on some of the ruder relics of the potter we should find this ornament. In the curious circle of vases (Fig. 153) we see arranged round the base the concentric rings, which were in time transformed into the Greek spiral. The same pattern is exemplified in the specimen from Curium (Fig. 154), from which, and from several others in the Metropolitan Museum, it might almost be inferred that the vessel had been shaped to suit the favorite style of decoration. A cognate style, also having its origin in metal-working, is that represented in the vase from Dali (Fig. 148), sufficiently authenticated by its Phœnician inscription. It belongs to a very large class, which appears to extend from the earliest times down to the beginning of purely Greek art. It will be observed that the squares run both horizontally and perpendicularly, an arrangement{207} much more noticeable in many other specimens. One of the earlier examples is seen on the bird-shaped vase in the illustration (Fig. 155. In what is probably a much later vessel, a swan with circular body and triangular wings makes its appearance. This is the rude attempt at decorating with figures of an artist skilled only in geometrical designs. One point is to be particularly noted before leaving these vases, viz., that in that bearing the Phœnician inscription, the vertical lines or bands give place to horizontal bands round the upper part of the body and neck. The Greeks invariably make use of the horizontal band.

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Fig. 155.—Phœnician Vases, found at Dali. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)
Fig. 155.—Phœnician Vases, found at Dali. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)

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Fig. 156.—Phœnician Vase, from Curium. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Mus.) Fig. 157.—Phœnician Vase, from Curium. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Mus.)

The approach to Greek art is marked by the introduction of several new features. In the vases from Curium (Figs. 149, 156, and 157), the lines are horizontal, the shapes improve, and the spout, consisting of a woman holding a pitcher, is indicative of a skill in moulding and an originality in designing, having little in common with the ruder forms from the same city. This is one of the ideas{208} which seems never to have occurred to the modern potter, whose most fantastically turned and severely shaped spouts contrast most unfavorably with the simple yet apt design of his old Phœnician predecessor. The Phœnician vase with animal figures from Dali (Fig. 158), is the ancestor of a large class of early Greek pottery similarly decorated. The shape and the encircling horizontal bands recall early Greek work, and the animal forms point to an Asiatic influence transmitted in part through Phœnicia, but probably also through other channels, to Greece. The style is rare among Cypriote vases. It is carried farther in the large vase from Curium (Fig. 151), which is remarkable as a combination of the Cypriote rectilinear method of decoration, the earlier form of the Greek fret, the Asiatic style of animal decoration, and the culmination of the Cypriote rows of concentric rings found in the bands of spirals. This is one of the most remarkable vases in the Cesnola collection, and also one of the most important links between the art of Greece and those of Phœnicia and the East. Even admitting it to have been made in Greece, and thence taken to Curium, it is in perfect harmony with the Phœnician vase last referred to, on the{209} one hand, and with that bearing the Phœnician inscription on the other.

The Greek vase and cups from Dali (Fig. 159) show a new motive in the decoration. The spirals give place on the vase to a running scroll, painted with a free hand; and in the kylix on the left, the concentric circles become semicircles, festooned round the lip after the fashion of lambrequins. In the kylix on the right, the rectilinear designs and enclosed squares become the fret. It will be seen hereafter, when we come to speak of Greece, how the forms of the kylix improve.

While we cannot assign an exact age to any of these works, we can see how the beginnings of the art of Greece can be traced to a much more remote antiquity than was previously apprehended. Mingling in the heroic age with a people uniting in itself much of the civilization of Assyria and Egypt, the Greeks were acquiring the knowledge which their own artistic genius subsequently turned to such brilliant account. The highway is complete from Greece to untold antiquity. We learn, therefore, from the relics brought together by General Cesnola, that the view taken of the devious course followed by ceramic art is correct. Egypt gave instruction to all. In her is the spring of ancient art. The Phœnicians studied under her Assyrian pupils, and the two branches, from Phœnicia and Egypt, met in Greece, and there appeared in a new form, more refined, and reflecting a higher ideality and a keener sensitiveness to the subtlest lines of beauty. Di Cesnola has found in Cyprus{210} their point of contact, and has disclosed to our eyes the teacher and scholar sleeping in a common grave.

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Fig. 159.—Greek Vase and Cups, found at Dali. Cesnola Coll., (N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)
Fig. 159.—Greek Vase and Cups, found at Dali. Cesnola Coll., (N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)

Should it be asked if in Cyprus alone we must look for the ceramic remains of Phœnicia, the Land of Palms, the answer must be negative. It is true that few relics have come down to us from the sites of her domestic industries. But let us glance briefly at the history of that wonderful country, wonderful alike in enterprise and in science. Ptolemy Claudius, writing in the second century, says that Phœnicia extended from Egypt on the south to the Eleutherus on the north, and eastward to the confines of Syria; or, in other words, that to it belonged the entire eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Like all other eastern nations, it changed its boundaries as the successive waves of war swept over it. First came the Persians, then the Greeks, and, lastly, the Romans. When enjoying its independence, in an earlier age, it was the disseminator of the knowledge which, to a great extent, it acquired in Egypt. To Greece it gave its alphabet, the foundation of the literature which has kindled the admiration of the scholars of all times. Its navigators passed the Pillars of Hercules and reached the shores of England. Phœnician colonies were founded all along the Mediterranean, at Utica and Carthage on the south, and at Marseilles in Gaul. Here, then, was a{211} people gathering in from every side all that the world could give of art and science, and spreading its knowledge with every keel which, from the great ports of Tyre and Sidon, furrowed the Mediterranean. As might be expected, therefore, the remains of its ceramic art and the evidences of its influence are found in Cyprus, Malta, Egypt, Carthage, Greece, Sicily, Rome, and Etruria.

The ceramic remains found on the Phœnician coast are nearly all referable to her later conquerors. One specimen is singular and suggestive. It was found at Tyre, and is a polished cruse, with round body, long neck, wide lips, and a handle joining the neck and body. It resembles the Egyptian too closely to leave any doubt of the origin of its style and manufacture. After our previous experiences we are quite prepared to meet a mythical Phœnician worker in clay; but his presence does not disturb our inferences. It merely pushes back to a prehistoric age the date when the first of Phœnicia’s debts to Egypt was incurred. Other examples, fragments with Phœnician inscriptions, give further hints of the immediate well-spring of Grecian art. Phœnician vases are found in Sicily. Egypt and Carthage teach the same lesson, and illustrate the wide-reaching enterprise of the Tyrian founders of Carthage.

Turning northward from Phœnicia to Asia Minor, the evidences of ceramic skill point to identically the same conclusion. Let us take the older first. There, as in Cyprus, we meet with early traces of Hellenic art. Across the Ægean sea, on the shores of Asia Minor, Greece again touched the older arts of Assyria and Egypt. The coffins found in Mesopotamia are after the Assyrian type. From Tarsus come terra-cotta works ornamented with green, in a simple style, closely allied to the Greek. At Rhodes has been found a vase or pitcher of turquoise blue, ribbed perpendicularly, and crossed at intervals by horizontal bands. Such specimens take us back again to Egypt. In short, the history of Asia Minor, its existence successively under Scythians, Medes, and Persians, while it was receiving the surplus population of Greece from the west, would lead us to look for what we only found in part in Cyprus, namely, native styles moulded by influences from east, west, and south. These generalizations are offered as a substitute for a more connected history, for the construction of which intelligibly the materials are wanting. Enough has{212} been said to show that through many different channels the arts of Egypt and the East set, in a long and steady stream, toward Europe; that there, meeting with the rising Hellenic civilization, they were transmuted and purified, and that from the Hellenizing process emerged the admirable art now called Greek.

Meanwhile it is to be noted that, so far, we have made allusion to only one-half of the debt which Europe owes to the East. Greece rejected the rich coloring and fantastic forms which reached her from the centre of all that was most brilliant in ceramics—the land between the Tigris and Euphrates. These were seized with avidity by Persia, the only survivor, in our time, of the four great monarchies of the East. Bright colors and gorgeous combinations were grateful to the eye revelling in the splendor almost unconsciously associated with the word “Oriental.” To Persia, therefore, we must look, not only as the great conservator of previous skill, but as the medium of its development into a higher form. That part of her inheritance from Assyria and Babylonia which concerns us now, was the knowledge of processes, of the deft mingling of colors, the production of tints, and the skilful application of enamels. We have seen to what purpose this knowledge was cultivated, in so far as the evidences found within her own borders can show. We have seen what may here be especially recalled, enamels and metallic lustre applied to pottery, with an almost bewildering brilliancy.

We now approach the question of Persia’s contributions to the art. Can, for example, none of the remains exhumed by Cesnola be claimed for Persia? It appears not, at least not with certainty, although certain plaques convey a hint of Persian workmanship. Whatever she left in Cyprus, if anything, is hardly to be distinguished from the older works of Assyria and Phœnicia. Had Persia, then, no originality, and where beyond her own limits must we look for its distinctive impress. Let us return for a moment to Persian history. We have already seen that the country was occasionally overrun by surrounding nations, but the fact is noticeable that when it could not resist, it absorbed its assailants. Its nationality was preserved even in conquest. A similar capacity for assimilation and independence is seen in its art. There can be no doubt of its having drawn from Assyria and Babylonia. Its most ancient architecture is sufficient to settle that point. But apart{213} from that, and keeping in view the influence of Mohammedanism and the influx of Chinese wares and possibly workmen in the sixteenth century, the art of Persia is marked throughout its entire course by certain distinguishing features which invasion could not obliterate. The artistic instinct was strong in the people as a whole; and conquest retarded the progress of art only to see it rise again in all its first vigor, to be spread far and wide even by those who had for a time hindered its native growth. In this way we can trace its advance to Asia Minor and Rhodes, through Egypt, along the northern coast of Africa, and thence to different points in Southern Europe.