Through the arch, which was used by the Etruskans, but which under the Romans became a most important part of architecture, the art of constructing was suddenly freed of all hindrances. Courts could be formed with more ease, and the ground-plan drawn with greater variety.
The cross-vault may be considered a specially Roman form. Two cylindrical arches were constructed intersecting each other at right angles in a quadrangular space. The intersection takes place at the two diagonal lines, thus uniting the opposite corners. The arches in their cross-form rise from four points of support, and divide the arch into four curved triangles, called calottes.
The cupola, a third form of the vault, was called forth in the Romans by their preference for circular buildings. The ancient mound was revived by them. It was the application of the arch to a circular ground-plan. A powerful larger or smaller member of decoration was produced, interrupting the flatness of walls, and allowing a rich variety of statuary to be used as ornament. This refers to the use of the half-cupola for semicircular niches and the apsidæ. These merely geometrical constructions would have been monotonous and without grace, like our railway stations; and would have been classed as works of engineering, but never of art; had not the Romans employed Greek forms in the shape of columns and pilasters, to adorn them. The Doric, Ionic, Attic, and Korinthian styles were all used, and a so-called composite or Roman order was added. The composite stood in the same relation to the proto-Korinthian, as Plautus to Aristophanes. The Romans, with arrogant clumsiness, placed a coarser and more contracted form of the Ionic capital on two rows of richly carved acanthus leaves. This was a bad composition, and left room for much improvement, which was effected more than fifteen hundred years later.
Nothing is known of art during the mythical period of Roman history.
During the first centuries of the Republic, the Etruskan style is said to have been prevalent, introduced by Tarquin. Square wooden huts with a rounded and tumulus-like roof of straw, were the first palaces of the Roman citizens. Only after the conquest of Greece 183 B.C., Grecian architecture and sculpture were introduced. From this date we may classify Roman art, under Greek, Assyrian, and Egyptian influences, into the following periods.
a. The first begins in the second century B.C., under the Republic, after the destruction of Korinthum by Mummius, and ends with the reign of the Augustan house, and the beginning of the rule of the Flavians, 69 A.D. This was the Græco-Roman Period of architecture and sculpture.
b. The second period commences with the Flavians, 69 A.D. After the tyrannical reigns of Tiberius and Nero, the cosmopolitan Imperial state acquired an apparent stability in new social forms, which found expression in gigantic artistic constructions. This period, which lasted down to Septimus Severus, 193 A.D., has three distinct phases.
α. A phase of powerful development under the Flavians.
β. A phase of brilliant success under Trajan (98–117 A.D.)
γ. A phase of revival of classic Greek forms under Hadrian (117–138 A.D.)
We may designate these phases of development as the Romano-Greek period.
c. The third period under the military despotism of the prætorian guards, during which Rome ceased to be the centre of universal dominion, and each province began to feel its own vitality, lasted from Septimus Severus (193–211 A.D.) to Constantine the Great. Art lost every basis—degenerated into luxurious pomp, and became heavier with each new product, and more fantastic in incredible details and impossible executions. We may best designate this as the Romano-eclectic period.
A. After the destruction of Korinthum, Rome abounded in Greek immigrants, and in Greek marble and bronze statues, friezes, pillars, and various movable works of art. The spoils of Greek temples and houses were set up in Roman houses built of bricks and mortar. The contrast between the unartistic architecture of the Romans, and the master-pieces of Greek art, was so striking, that they were forced to endeavour to improve their architecture, and art became to a certain degree fashionable. The wealthier classes began to study it theoretically, and to affect an immense amount of patronizing enthusiasm, without any deeper understanding of the laws of taste and beauty, but with a determination to outdo all other nations in the profession of works of art. Such sentiments often engender a brisk trade, but they fail to promote real art, or to benefit genuine artists. The walls of the houses of this period were generally white, with red painted ornamentations. Red is the favourite colour with children, savages, and butchers in mind. This led to the making of red bricks, which were mixed with others of different colours, and thus originated polylithic wall-decoration. The spaces between the red bricks were filled in with a black composition in imitation of different textile patterns, and this mode of decoration was called Niello. By degrees, bricks and cement were superseded by marble, and the houses became so rich, that a Puritan party of Roman ἰδιώταις {idiôtais} formed itself, and thundered against corruption and enervation, luxury and degradation. The power of this party was so great that Cicero, fearing lest these stern and dull Roman worthies should think him acquainted with the principles of artistic refinement, declared his utter ignorance of art, and expressed his high contempt for all such futile ‘allotria.’
The art of ornamentation became more and more universal. The fora and atria were overcrowded with bronze and marble statues and groups. These efforts, however, were not genuine; they did not grow out of the artistic wants and love of the people—the whole movement was strange to their minds—and was altogether a heterogeneous element grafted on their natures by the force of circumstances. They succeeded by degrees in ornamenting grandly, but there was always something in contradiction to, or in conflict with, really good taste. They used patterns meant for floors on their walls, and wall patterns on their ceilings, and that which would have fitted a ceiling, they laid on their floors; creating by this means a sad confusion. Asia always excelling in bright colours, and in a secret talent for matching them correctly, excited the admiration of the Romans, and they began to paint their walls. They often cut out the decorated parts of a pillaged Greek temple, and fixed these pieces at random in their houses, caring very little whether there was a congruity between these and their own wall-decoration or not. We have, during this period, an attempt at ‘scenography.’ The walls were painted over with architectural views, representing colonnades, interiors, landscapes, and later, Greek mythological and even historical scenes. In these, Perseus and Andromeda, or Medea meditating the murder of her children, or Herkules destroying the serpent, or some other sensational deed, formed the cherished subjects. Under the influence of the Greeks of Alexandria, another custom became prevalent. The walls were more and more panelled, and the panels filled with works of art.
This ‘mania,’ or fashion, became so universal with the Romans that they could find no more works of classic art, and had to engage living artists to reproduce antique cornices, metopes, colonnades, capitals, shields, helmets, tripods, sphinxes, and griffins; but even these artists were so overwhelmed with commissions, that it was impossible for them to satisfy the feverish demand. To produce works of art more quickly, they began to paint the panels, and the Roman empire became a complete manufactory of wall-decorations. Light colonnades of slender reeds, baldachins with pointed arches and fantastic monsters, filled the walls, and sometimes mere combinations of colours were used in a conventional style. Art again sank into mere trade. The panels and walls were not decorated with the works of the good old Greek masters, but with mere imitations. Mannerism supplanted style, and arabesques, flourishes, insignificant chequered patterns, or geometrical puzzles, took the place of historical paintings—poor wall-decorations in a theatrical style, without any attempt at higher art.
The use of marble as a means of decoration was not always customary with the Romans, and was introduced by L. Crassus, the censor, who had his house decorated with six small columns of marble from Hymettus, and was very much blamed for this extravagance. M. Scaurus, the ædile, who built the famous wooden theatre, decorated with 360 pillars of marble, glass, and bronze, and about 3,000 statues and images, had the atrium and peristyle of his private house richly adorned with exquisite columns. Manurra, prefect of the armourers, under Julius Cæsar in Gaul, is set down as the first who had his walls decorated with marble incrustations; whilst M. Catulus could boast of the first marble flooring, and of thresholds in Numidian marble. Of temples, one of the first constructed of marble blocks in a purer Greek style was that of Jupiter Tonans. The temple of Fortuna Virilis which rose on a lofty substructure on the banks of the Tiber, was in the Ionic style. The Vesta temple at Tivoli, enthroned on a steep and rocky height above the foaming waters of the Anio, was a circular building in the Korinthian style.
Theatres, public halls, baths, and Fora were found necessary, either to distract the public mind from political matters, or to gain the suffrages of the fickle mob, eager for amusement and excitement. The first theatre in stone was erected by Pompey. Julius Cæsar surpassed all his predecessors and rivals in magnificence. He began the theatre of Marcellus, which was completed by Augustus, and so enlarged and beautified the Circus Maximus that it could accommodate 150,000 spectators; he built the beautiful Basilica Julia, a public law-court for the Centumviri or Judges to sit in, and hear causes, and for the counsellors to receive their clients, and had a new Forum constructed, and adorned it with a temple dedicated to Venus Genetrix. The Roman Forum (in imitation of the Greek Agora) was a building about three times as long as broad. The interior was surrounded by arched porticos, and flanked by the most stately edifices, such as theatres, basilicæ, and temples.
These Fora were devoted to special purposes, as Fora civilia or Fora venalia, and were used for public meetings, or as market-places. Cæsar tried to become a Roman Perikles, but was distanced in this by the Emperor Augustus. Up to the establishment of Cæsarism, Rome had been literally a city of ‘bricks;’ now it became a ‘city of marble.’ Temples were profusely built and rebuilt. The Cæsarian theocracy required these abodes of splendour and self-glorification. One of the most imposing specimens of this Græco-Roman architecture was the Pantheon, built by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus. Originally it was to have been an entrance-hall to splendid Thermæ, but on its completion it was turned into a temple, and dedicated to the avenging Jupiter. It was a circular building 132 feet in diameter, and 132 feet high, and triumphantly proclaimed Rome’s wealth and might. It contained a statue of Minerva by Pheidias, and a Venus, who it is said had in her ear the half of the pearl left by Cleopatra. The pearl was valued at 125,000l. That a Greek marble statue should have been ornamented with part of the ear-ring of an Egyptian princess, is highly characteristic of Roman taste in matters of art. One of the most splendid remains in the style of good Greek Korinthian ornamentation is the temple of Augustus at Pola in Istria. Triumphal gates, these Roman specialities, were at this period simple in design, and perfect in execution. Of the Mausoleum of Augustus nothing is left but the substructure, 220 feet in diameter, now used as a circus for equestrian performances. ‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’ if based on mere ostentation and vain pride.
During this period Nikopolis was planned and built; the Temple of Solomon was adorned with colonnades in the Greek Korinthian style, and at Nîmes (Nemausus) we possess the most complete remains of a prostylos pseudipteros temple of Roman architecture, with the purest Korinthian columns. Under Tiberius the camp of the prætorians was turned into a marble palace. Under Claudius harbours and moles were enlarged, built, and decorated. Nero burned Rome, to reconstruct it with greater pomp. The architects Celerus and Severus had to build the golden houses, of which the porticos were miles long. The dining-rooms surpassed in splendour anything dreamt of in Indian poetry. In the decoration of this palace, or rather cluster of palaces, we trace the greatest mistake an artist can be guilty of. The error is of Asiatic origin. It may be designated as a conscious ‘lying’ in the constructive elements. They tried to hide the costly material under a cheap disguise; a tendency as bad and objectionable, as a ‘lying’ in cheap substances to represent costly materials. The Romans used tortoise-shell as veneer for their furniture, and painted it to make it appear like wood; we, on the other hand, use wood, and paint it over to make it appear ‘giallo antico,’ (yellow marble), or any other costly stone. Ornamentation began to lose all symmetry and proportion. Confusion and profusion ruled supreme. The walls of the rooms looked like exhibitions of oriental carpets, tapestry, and jewelry. Art retrograded to the over-painted, over-decorated, over-ornamented shrouds, in which the mummies of old were buried. For a time art was carried with Asiatic splendour to a grave of tasteless pomposity.
B. With the Flavians, down to Septimus Severus, a new spirit of artistic universalism pervaded the Roman world. The Greek element waned, and the circular forms of the Romans, ornamented with an indiscriminate mixture of Doric, Ionic, and Korinthian columns, predominated. The Colosseum, a Flavian amphitheatre, begun by Vespasian and finished by Titus, belongs to this period. Three rows of arcades, the first of Doric, the second of Ionic, and the third of Korinthian half-columns, with their entablatures, crowned with a fourth story, adorned with Korinthian pilasters, and furnished with windows, encompassed an oval, 600 feet long by 500 feet broad, capable of holding 80,000 spectators. The circus was so constructed that it could also be used as a naumachy. In this over-decorated pompous building, the great fights of the gladiators took place; here men and wild beasts met in deadly struggle; here men, if killed, were dragged away by ropes fixed in their bodies with iron hooks; here the Imperators sat with all the nobility of Rome, and delighted in sports, which, at a later period of Rome’s spiritual dominion, were only surpassed in cruelty by the pious ‘auto-da-fés’ of misguided priests.
The triumphal arch of Titus, on the heights of the Via Sacra; with one arch broken through the massive walls, ornamented on each side by half-columns; was the first to be decorated with the coarser form of the Roman composite capital. The ornamentation keeps within certain limits; the inner side walls of the arch have excellent reliefs, referring to the destruction of Jerusalem.
Everything yet enumerated was surpassed in splendour and magnificence by the ‘Forum Trajanum’ (A.D. 98–117), of which Apollodorus, born at Damaskus, was the architect. The great basilica Ulpia, with its five aisles, formed part of it. In a small courtyard, surrounded by pillars, rose the gigantic column of Trajan to a height of 92 feet. The reliefs, which in spiral windings surround the richly ornamented column, are a kind of Imperial record, chronicling with historical accuracy and dryness, scene after scene of the Dacian war. The figures are two feet high and not less than 2,500 in number; they are sculptured in a simple naturalistic style, void of all idealisation, and show the artist’s talent for grouping. The heads of the figures, as was generally the case in all sculptures by the Romans, are too small for the bodies.
The triumphal arch of Constantine, with three openings, is undoubtedly the most splendid monument of its kind. It was of Pentelic marble, taken from the fragments of an arch in honour of Trajan. The proportions are noble, and the execution is technically precise; the ornamentation, however, is too profuse. The second phase of this period degenerated very quickly. Cornices began to be fluted; triglyphs and indentations were used alternately in endless rows; even the central volutes of the Corinthian capitals (the caulicoli) were over-decorated. Everything ran wild; rosettes, cassettes, shields, consols, stereobates, and stylobates were used abundantly, without sense and reason, to heighten the effect of the horizontal lines of the buildings. Everything was out of shape, out of proportion, and out of place. An eternal repetition of the same forms proclaimed the same desperate deification of the omnipotent power of the theocratic ruler.
Hadrian, the emperor, whose position constituted him a divine architect, and who by his very dignity must have known art better than any other mortal, did not share, with many a self-conceited artist of our time, the idea that the ‘work and labour done’ was all that was required in art, and that any knowledge of correct principles, any feeling of beauty, any acquaintance with esthetics or with art-history, was useless, and that money and power of execution were the only things required. On the contrary, though Emperor of the Romans, he diligently studied the antique, and tried to revive classic art.
We had an imperial architect, with an unlimited amount of gold, silver, marble, wood, and precious material at his command, and yet he had to go back to the Greeks for elegant forms in ornamentation. He had Apollodorus executed for daring to find fault with the confused plan of the temple of Venus (Amor) and Roma, which was a building surpassing, so far as splendour went, any construction of those times. The double temple had certainly something whimsical in its plan. The Emperor was too forcibly struck by the discovery that Roma read backwards gave Amor, and wanted to express this discovery in an architectural allegory, placing two temples back to back so that they made one, to typify two words with two meanings, that yet were one word. The success, so far as correctness of plan went, was doubtful. The cassettes of the bronze roof which united the two temples into one, were most elegantly finished. The court of the temple was 500 feet by 300. Another tower-like circular monument, based on a square sub-structure, formed the Mausoleum (now the Castle of St. Angelo). The diameter of the circular part was 226 feet. The construction vies in solidity and grandeur with the Egyptian monuments. The blocks of travertin are colossal, and the immense building was covered with Parian marble, and crowned with a huge quadriga.
Under the Antonines architecture, and art in general, gradually declined. The people occupied themselves with entirely different topics. Stoicism and Christianity—the old world of heathen formality, and the new world of spiritual redemption—were placed in conflict. A disturbed state of the public mind rarely favours plastic art. A specimen exhibiting this conflict may be seen in the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, built by Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138–161). A second edition of Trajan’s column is given in that of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161–180), which stands on the field of Mars. The reliefs, winding round the shaft, represent scenes from the war against the Markomanni. There is a certain liveliness in the execution, but the composition is wanting in clearness and precision, and above all in idealisation. Rivers, fields, and enclosures of walls, are marked with great accuracy; and the reliefs take, in style, the forms of geographical maps. Strict realism is the leading feature in this monument.
C. During the third period architecture and sculpture, ornamentation and painting, had soon to yield to a continual use of arms. The proud mistress of the world no more expanded her sway; she was once more busy in decorating her rich palaces, but in care and sorrow, and with an anxious brow, haunted by the necessity for exerting all her powers to keep what she possessed. The provinces had learnt to do without Rome; the consuls and pro-consuls had so well imitated their divine masters, that they thought themselves gods, and the supreme deity, the Imperator, lost his power over them. The State—based on an abstraction—began to vanish like a midnight phantom at daybreak. The one-sided deification of matter, during the old heathen times, had to yield to a totally new mode of feeling, thinking, speaking, and acting. The new times were seeking new forms, and had to pass from a savage state, through that of barbarism, symbolism, and mysticism, into self-consciousness, in order to find such shapes as would express a perfect harmony between spirit and matter. In the meantime, art dragged on its existence in copying what the old masters of Greece and the artists of Rome had done. The chisel, ruler, nay the very stones, trembled in the hands of the artists. They felt that they worked without a basis; that they heaped up blocks to see them soon crumble into the dust; that they constructed streets of pompous columns, some of them 3,500 feet long, to see them empty and deserted; they ornamented, but did it with a heavy heart; their soul was no more in the work. They heard already the deep spiritual whisper of other tidings resounding through the world on one side, and the terrible temporal shout of powerful barbarians, not yet enervated by luxury and licentiousness, armed with swords and iron clubs, on the other. The footsteps of avenging phantoms were heard in the North; the ‘hallelujahs’ of redeemed humanity in the South. This period is ushered in with the triumphal arch of Severus, on which the reliefs are placed without any regard to the architectural arrangement. Caracalla (A.D. 211–217) had baths constructed, with gigantic halls, furnished with 1,600 marble seats, with shady promenades, pompous reading-rooms, and places for games of every variety. This was to be a paradise on earth, to detach men from that spiritual Eden of love and happiness, the gates of which were opened by Christ. In feverish excitement, streets, palaces, basilicæ, halls, market-places, monuments, and whole towns, were built by the heathens. The pomp of worship was increased. Diocletian constructed baths with 2,400 seats; the principal hall was under three cross-vaults, with a span of 80 feet each, resting on granite columns. Sensationalism seized upon both people and artists; a sensationalism tinged with Roman vulgarity. All the principles of architecture, sculpture, and ornamentation were neglected. Columns and arches were mixed together in doleful incongruity. The arch rested on the architrave, or often rose without interruption directly from the capital. Columns were made in spiral or screw form; the variety of details was oppressive; no rest, no cæsura distinguished their ornamentation. It was, in fact, an ornamentation over-ornamented. The technical execution was everywhere splendid, but utterly mechanical; principles were neglected in art, because Roman life had lost even the one guiding principle of its existence—expansion by brutal force. The vulgar in mind and taste will always be charmed by huge and imposing masses, by the richness of the material, the daring of geometrical combination, and by startling feats of mechanical contrivance. The gorgeous mouldings, the friezes of endless decorations, the capitals with their rich foliage, marshalled in precise architectural lines, like Roman legions placed in battle array, have a peculiarly mystic charm for all those, who care more for effect than for taste or severity of style, or more for show than for symmetry and proportion; but if they love the old Roman style, and wish to work in it, let them above all insist on genuine materials. Let them work in real granite, travertin, and marble; let them not work in iron and glass, or in plaster of Paris, instead of Carrara marble; or in wood painted and varnished to represent granite, lapis lazuli (azure-stone), or giallo antico. An artist’s first duty is to know and master his material, and not to try and bring about Roman architectural effects with substances that require an altogether different treatment. Whenever we endeavour to shirk this law, we are sure to produce something small and mean, thin and wasted, notwithstanding gorgeous dimensions. Whilst trying to look grand and haughty, substantial and pompous, we tell ‘falsehoods’ in bricks and mortar, in painted friezes, sham columns, and meretricious porticos; and we are then astonished that our artistic product, instead of being admired, is laughed at as a caricature.
In Greece the dynamic force was concentrated on the reproduction of ideal beauty; in Rome it was exhausted in conquests and politics. Only so long as the moral force of beauty—equivalent to that of virtue—counterbalanced the eccentricities of a wild fantastic imagination, the Greeks were capable of producing models of art. The Romans never cultivated this balance; they disciplined themselves, but in a totally different direction. This technical, mechanical, and military discipline is, at a certain period of an individual’s or a nation’s life, highly necessary, in order to place the bodily and intellectual capacities under the guidance of some authority, although this may be a mere abstraction. The results which may thus be attained, can be studied in Roman art, in spite of all its shortcomings.
Christianity now illuminated the world with its clear light; but, dazzled by the divine brilliancy, everything in art, science and social life appeared at first dark, black, and hopeless. By degrees the minds of men began to grasp the newly proclaimed eternal law, through which alone the disturbed inner and outer, spiritual and material, moral and intellectual, static and dynamic forces of humanity were to attain a perfect balance. In time man became conscious of his nature, and emancipated his spirit in life and in art. He began to strive upwards, to detach himself from mere forms, however beautiful, if there was no meaning, no soul, no sense in them; he sought in everything the redeeming IDEA, without which no modern work of art is possible. Thus, ancient art had to yield to different principles. We shall have in future to distinguish between artistic products of reality, feeling, and intellect, till we shall find ourselves obliged to seek for a combination of these elements in order to understand modern art.
Historically and philosophically, from the point of view of whatever religious denomination; in the eyes of the devout believer, as well as in the eyes of the sceptic; by the thinker, and by the mere automaton of blood, flesh and bones; it must be admitted, that the two most important events in the history of humanity were the foundation of Christianity, and the great migration of the Northern people. The one was a spiritual movement, the other thoroughly material.
It is usual, in tracing the historical development of mankind in science and art, to follow the apparent course of the sun, and to assume that progress travelled with Indra, Ormuzd, Horus and Phoibos Apollo, from East to West. This is, however, a mere phrase. To understand and appreciate the history of man, it is better to divide the globe into a southern and northern hemisphere; for we find, that in analogy with this subdivision, the material as well as the intellectual development of life on our globe took place. We may even go further, and trace a distinction between the development of life and art in the south and north of the northern and southern hemispheres. In the farthest south of the southern hemisphere we have animal life and man, in the very lowest scale of progressive development; whilst the further we travel towards the north, the more animal life and the intellectual capacity of man increase. This is also the case in the northern hemisphere, up to the frigid zone, where a reaction sets in. In the south the moral power was more developed than the intellectual. In the south the predominant static force, joined to an ill-disciplined imagination, drove man to the field of metaphysical speculation; the misunderstood laws of nature, and the ignorance of the sluggish and indolent masses, gave free play to superstition and priestcraft. Thus the south (or south-east) was the birth-place of various theogonies, and religious systems. Idolatry, zoolatry, Sabaism, theism, pantheism, astrology, symbolism, mysticism, alchemy, magic, and cabalism originated in the south. The intellectual power in humanity, with a strong tendency to regulate itself by moral force, decidedly prevailed in the north, or north-west of our globe; and we received philosophy, as well as art, in their highest perfection, from Greece, the then most northern dwelling-place of civilized humanity. All the sciences which, through their beneficial influence have promoted the welfare and progress of humanity, were fostered in the North. In the North, astronomy, geography, history, botany, zoology, physiology, anatomy, chemistry, geology, and cosmogony were developed.
The savage of the South, up to our days, does not go beyond an ornamentation with geometrical figures; he can neither produce animals nor the human figure. The Egyptians surpassed the Assyrians and Babylonians in their monumental architecture, but in the plastic reproduction of the human form they never succeeded. Their sitting figures had legs and thighs forming right angles in the side view, while in front they were parallel; the drapery was merely marked by lines, rarely interrupted by folds. In their historical and allegorical bas-reliefs the composition is devoid of elegance and correctness of outlines; but they already showed a remarkable power in drawing animals. The Indians reached a higher stage of progress in sculpture; their mythology and poetry furnished them with a variety of subjects, with which they covered the walls of their shrines and temples; after the doctrines of Buddha became more universal, they attained grandeur in their architecture, combined with a certain degree of elegance. The human form is reproduced with ease; the proportions, though too soft, too sensual, are more correct than with the Egyptians.
So long as the Greek artists worked with reverence and modesty, inspired by faith in the gods, they were capable of understanding God’s revelation of beauty in man’s outer form. So long as the Romans unconsciously worked in this spirit, they produced their stupendous architectural monuments. When, however, State and citizens were forced by false principles to war with reality for a beggarly existence, or to plunge into mere sensuous enjoyments, man came to an open rupture with his destiny, and humanity might have perished altogether in sin and iniquity, had not Providence mercifully interfered by freeing, through Christ, the ‘inner man’—that is, the intellectual and moral force in man—thus preparing humanity for a higher progressive life. The south of Asia had to go through the same religious and artistic phases of development. Buddhism stands to Brahmanism in the same relation as Christianity to Mosaism and Heathenism. Excepting, however, that both religions were reformations of older established creeds, all analogy between them ceases. The proof of the difference lies in the diametrically opposed development produced by Buddhism and Christianity. It is true that Buddhism teaches us not to kill, not to steal, not to lie, and not to be drunken. Christianity does the same. Buddha, in twelve other ordinances, extols self-abnegation, poverty, and commands all to meditate amongst the tombs on the fleeting transitoriness of our earthly existence. Christianity does the same. Christ, however, redeemed and freed our spiritual nature, and brought it into a self-conscious, vivid activity; whilst Buddhism degraded this higher individual nature into a nonentity, denying that there was an independent moral agent in us; teaching that we were phenomena of an all-pervading divine power, by which universality we should be absorbed after life. So long as Christianity held, though in a different shape, nearly the same mystic principles as Buddhism, the results in art were the same; for our ecclesiastical art was a revival of Buddhistic temples, with all their divisions and sub-divisions, their pointed arches, their variegated columns and pillars, the triforium, the altar (Daghopa), cloisters, chapels, and crypts.
Christ’s divine words resounded at a period when the Greeks had long turned their minds to the licentious worship of the sensuous. The Egyptians, sighing under their Roman taskmasters, had taken refuge in dark mysticism, the meaning of which had been long lost to them; the Jews were divided into quarrelling sects, sunken in religious indifference, or occupied with mere outward formalities, hating everyone and hated by everyone. The Romans knelt tremblingly before an imperial divinity, slaves and poor being considered mere burdens on society; the rich were merciless, debauched, and revelled in amusements; infanticides, suicides, murder and decay, despair and annihilation, were every-day occurrences. At this period, under such circumstances, the divine Master died on the cross, sealing with his death the one great tiding of love: ‘that we are all children of one Father, who is in heaven.’ The god of revenge of the old world was transformed into a God of inexhaustible love. With the Jews and the ancients, he only was blessed who had plenty on earth; now, the pure in mind, whether poor or rich, weak or mighty, beautiful or ugly, was extolled. God was not merely present in the universe as its living soul, or in a burning bush, in thunder and lightning, in growling volcanoes, in an ark, a carved idol, a statue or in a temple. God was present, wherever a kind, loving, and forgiving mind was ready to be His ark or temple. Christ repudiated all local gods; did not require any sacrifices of plants or animals; did not prescribe any diet, or outward sanguinary sign; did not allow polygamy; did not proclaim his followers the only chosen children of the Father of All; but taught the one and indivisible, and ever-true law of peace, love, and tolerance. This doctrine is as universal as intellect; it must be of as divine origin as intellect itself; it is, and can be, the only faith which must once unite Humanity into one great loving and beloved brotherhood. What a change! Not only a change; it was the building up of a new glorious future; it was the re-establishment of the lost balance between the working forces of humanity; it was the redemption of our individual, moral, and intellectual capacities; it was the enunciation of an eternal law, under which humanity had, till then, unconsciously developed, but of which it became conscious in word as well as in spirit, through Christ. Slavery in body or mind was, at least in principle, for ever abolished; and one of the noblest edifices of Byzantine architecture in Italy, the church of St. Vitale at Ravenna, was dedicated by Justinian, a Roman Emperor, to the memory of a slave, who was martyred for the sake of his piety and love. Hospitals for the poor and sick, Xenodochia (refuges for strangers) began to be built—architectural constructions of which the whole ancient world could not boast.
The Christian spirit at first struggled to find a corresponding form in art; the new wine was put into the old vessels till it burst the decaying fetters and issued forth in a life-giving art-stream, in two directions:—
(a) As Romanesque art in the West, a decaying continuation of Roman art;
(b) As Byzantine art in the East, a revival of Asiatic art.
The beginning of Christian plastic and pictorial art is to be looked for in subterranean caves; in catacombs, used by Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Etruskans, and Romans as burial-places. The deep but simple doctrines of Christ were at first hidden in symbols, types, allegories and emblems. In a Symbol we try to express a general idea by a special outward sign, totally heterogeneous in form to the meaning. Geometrical figures, plants, and animals, furnish the elements of symbolism. In the Allegory the artist represents congruities, traces connections, unites analogies and separates differences. Imagination has in allegories an inexhaustible field for composition. Types are signs, arbitrarily interpreted as meaning something, which they may or may not mean. Emblems with the Greeks were golden or silver figures which could be detached from vessels. With the Romans the word was used as a synonym for symbol or metaphor. They became with us Christians signs in colours. White or blue was the emblem of innocence, red of joy, black of mourning, green of hope, and purple of power or dignity.
Myths generally had their origin in symbols and allegories, which found interpreters, commentators, exegists, and expounders in the priests of the ancient world. Later, the myths were taken up by poets and artists, and the dogmatic explanations of mystic signs were transformed into legends, tales, sagas, or even into historical facts. Nothing affords greater delight to the inquisitive mind of man than a mystic sign! The more unintelligible such a sign is, the more welcome it is to the childish creature. Anything veiled in doubt, shrouded in a symbol or type, has a peculiar charm. Anything that can only be guessed at, or dimly felt, is more admired than that which lies clearly before our perceptive faculty. ‘Mysteries were taught in symbols, in darkness at night-time; the symbolic itself is to be compared to night and darkness,’ says Demetrius. No wonder that symbols were adopted by the first followers of Christ. They were too near to Egypt; the ancient world had not yet altogether lost its hold on the minds of the masses, and they could not have avoided availing themselves of forms which were used by Indians, Greeks, Egyptians, or Romans.
In the old catacombs of St. Sebastiano, St. Calisto, St. Lorenzo, and Sta. Agnese at Rome, extending altogether to about 750 miles, and in those of St. Gennaro de Poveri, Sta. Maria della Sanitá, and Sta. Maria della Vita at Naples, we find some attempts at symbolism; the cross, the monogram of Christ’s name ΧΡ {CHR}; or an ΑΩ {AÔ}, symbolical of the beginning and the end of all things; a palm branch, doves, the piscis vesica, and here and there a lamb. But these signs belong to the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. The inscriptions do not go farther back than the second century. The homely simplicity of the early Christians is distinctly to be traced in the absence of all symbolic decoration during the first two centuries. Gradually the Christians passed through the phase of geometrical ornamentation. Triangles and circles, crosses and squares, squares divided into four squares, or the square taken three times, giving twelve points, which number contains the sacred numbers; three (the Trinity), five (the five sacred wounds of Christ), seven (the seven cardinal virtues, or the seven days of Creation), and twelve (the twelve apostles), made their appearance. Seven was a holy and mystic number with all the ancient nations. There were seven planets, and seven colours in olden times; Apollo’s lyre had seven strings; Pan used seven pipes for his flute. There are seven days of the week; seven or three times seven are the critical days in medicine; there were seven branches to the candlestick of the Jews in the Temple of Jerusalem. Seven years Jacob had to serve for Leah; and seven others for Rachel; seven were the ears and kine of which Pharaoh dreamt; seven were the gods in Scandinavian mythology; seven were the sufferings of the Virgin Mary; seven the cardinal virtues; seven the deadly sins; seven are the sacraments of the Romish Church. We cannot fail to see in the minutest details of history and art, philosophy and religious systems, an eternally progressing ‘one-ness’ pervading humanity as a great whole.
Scarcely had the Christians adopted these signs, when they passed on to the next phase, adorning churches and tombs, altars and sacred vessels, with emblems taken from the vegetable and animal kingdoms, to serve as the holy visible outward signs of some sacred inward grace or virtue. What was immortal was to be expressed in mortal forms, and the finite was to embody the infinite. Again, the meaning hallowed the form; again, by degrees, the form became all, and the spirit was altogether lost through the mere outward sign. Art suffered for centuries under the gloomy pressure of symbolism, and in striving to disentangle itself, produced marvels, but it was only freed and attained higher forms of beauty again, when humanity had gone back to those laws, which when followed out had produced forms perfect in themselves.
For centuries art revelled in the reproduction of symbolical crows, eagles, peacocks, doves, gridirons, pitchers, beehives, oxen, pigs, bulls, geese, violins, fishes, &c., as the attributes of St. Sebastian, St. John, Sta. Barbara, St. Thomas of Aquin, St. Cyprian, St. Narcissus, St. Bernard, St. Sebaldus, St. Anthony, St. Martin, St. Genesius, St. Chrysogonus, &c. A whole science arose out of these symbols and emblems: Iconology, which differs only in form from mythology. The mere phenomena of nature were no longer embodied; the individual spirit that lived in the form, became all in all. We were thus introduced to a two-fold world by Christian art.
(1) Into a spiritual world, in which our intellect moved, as it were, in a circle. We took our beginning in the infinite, lost our transitory bodily form, and returned to the infinite from which we emanated—a kind of idealisation of the corporeal.
(2) A world of external forms, which in their individual phenomena had only a meaning as the fragile temporary vessels of the eternal Spirit; this Spirit was no longer a universal sum total by which the individual was hereafter absorbed, but was assumed to remain individualised through all eternity. Artists and men worked not only for this world, but their deeds were to outlast all time to come. In this two-fold world, Christian art went through the following phases:—
(a) Through a historical phase, which commenced with Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection, as the new central point of all things. The eternal Spirit was embodied, worked in a finite form, and freed from it, regained its absolute divinity. This led in time to sublime historical sketches in sculpture and painting.
(b) Through a religious phase. The spirit, freed and redeemed by Christ, sought in deeds of harmonious love totally new spheres of action. Crystals, flowers, trees, landscapes, animals and men, were interwoven to proclaim not only outward beauty, as with the Greeks, but a union of the inorganic and the organic, the ancient and the new worlds, in honour of one God in three emanations or personifications.
So long as bishops, priests, elders, deacons and laymen, were occupied in trying to shape the new spirit into words, art appeared to slumber. A too strong storm-wind of dissension on metaphysical niceties, of mystic and dogmatic hair-splittings, hindered a plastic treatment of Christianity. Gnostics, Nestorians, Manichæans, Donatists, Arians, and Athanasians, &c., wasted the energies of the early Christian artists, with their wild distinctions, their incomprehensible differences. Quarrels as to whether a blessing was more efficacious when bestowed with three or only with two uplifted fingers; whether crosses of equal parts, or crosses in which one division was smaller than the other, were more powerful, did not promote the productive ability of artists. When, under Constantine, Christianity was elevated to the rank of a State religion, churches were built in honour of the new faith. In the West the Roman Basilicæ were given up to the religious worship of the Christians, and in time, mixed with Teuton forms, produced the Romanesque style. In the East a lively revival of Asiatic forms, of Indian, Assyrian, and Babylonian patterns, took place, and from these combinations we have the so-called Byzantine style.
The general characteristics of the early Christian style, in which the form of the Roman basilica predominated, were the following:—The apsis, the seat of the bishop and clergy, was semicircular. Between the apsis and the nave stood the altar, or rather the common table, canopied by a baldachin supported by columns. The walls were covered with figures of Christ. The main body consisted of a broad and lofty central nave, on the two sides of which there were two lower passages, divided by rows of columns, supporting the upper wall of the nave either by a common architrave, or by strong circular arches. The upper wall was provided with large broad windows, some being also placed in the low walls of the side-aisles. The apsis was kept in mystic darkness.
The threefold division of the Indian, Egyptian, and Hebrew temples was carefully kept up. The priests assembled in the apsis; the worshippers in the hall or the galleries; and the penitents or sinners stopped at the entrance. Of this period, we have the Basilica of Reparatus, in Tingitanum (now Orléansville) in Algeria, and another in El Hayz, on a small oasis, in the Libyan desert. In the former the pillars were probably square, and the apsis is not marked outside. The latter is furnished with vaulted aisles, adorned with pilasters and niches in the Romano-Egyptian style.
Under Constantine, Christian churches of larger dimensions were constructed; marble decorations and a profusion of columns were common. The five aisles still predominated, the Athanasians not having yet succeeded in establishing the Trinitarian doctrine. St. Peter’s at Rome (rebuilt in the 16th century); Sta. Croce at Jerusalem, and the Church of Sta. Maria at Bethlehem, built by Helena, the wife of Constantine, were splendid specimens of the pure early Christian style. The transept before the raised apsis was an innovation. The central aisle (the nave) rises in independent loftiness. The galleries are dispensed with, as the dimensions of the building are considerably increased. Light is admitted through windows in the lofty central aisle. The lines all tend towards the altar, and the high tribune. The nave is separated from the transept by a lofty arch supported by pillars. The transept is provided with broad windows, throwing the greatest amount of light on the altar, by which means a sublime effect is attained. St. Peter’s at Rome, and Sta. Maria at Bethlehem, are provided with cross-beams, which do not accord with the superstructure, which is too heavy. Before these churches, in a court-yard, stood the fountain. These fountains were common to all the Indian, Egyptian, and Hebrew temples, because the sanctity of water was recognised by all the religious sects of the Southeast. San Paolo fuori le mura belonged to this class of churches. It was constructed by Theodosius and Honorius. ‘The mighty apsis, about eighty feet in breadth, is increased in effect by a lofty transept, which stretches in front of it, across the whole nave. The body of the church has five aisles. Eighty granite columns, connected by circular arches, rise in four rows in order to divide the aisles, and to support the upper wall of the central aisle, and the framework of the roof. The main aisle opens into the transept with a broad and lofty triumphal arch, which rests on two colossal columns. A splendid atrium, surrounded with colonnades, was added to the front, completing the plan of this basilica.’ The high walls above the central isle fulfilled a double purpose: they vividly expressed an expanding tendency upwards, and filled the soul with the idea of the infinite. This tendency was still more strongly expressed in ecclesiastical or Gothic architecture. Scenes from the life of Christ and his disciples were painted, and, in imitation of Roman decoration, gilded panels and marble pavings were freely used. After the fourth century the five aisles were gradually abandoned, and only three were used, symbolic of the Trinity. We have here a kind of Indian or rather Buddhistic renaissance.
When Ravenna became the seat of the Byzantine Exarchs (viceroys), the Ostrogoth influences which were perceptible under Theodoric vanished, and a freer organisation of the sacred edifices was introduced by the addition of an independent bell-tower, reminding us of the Buddhistic towers or pillars, the Irish round towers, the minarets of the Mahomedans, and the obelisks of the Egyptians. The tower rose in a cylindrical form, without tapering. The roofs of the churches were generally flat. Strong wall pillars, connected by circular arches, framed the windows as a repetition of the arcades below. The capitals retained a double row of acanthus leaves, but the imposts became stronger, taking the form of a coffin or a small altar, adorned with crosses, or the monogram of Christ. The churches of St. Vitale and St. Apollinare in Classe, are models of this transition style, which formed the link between the Romanesque and the Byzantine. In these we find Greek marble columns, profuse mosaics on gold grounds, panels and medallions filled with historical scenes, or the portraits of bishops, prophets, saints, and martyrs; the decoration is heavy in outlines, the forms and figures too naturalistic; the taste gorgeous without refinement; and the technical treatment rough and defective.
Whilst the architectural and ornamental styles were receiving fixed forms as the pure Romanesque of the West—through the influence of the Teutons, who became masters of Italy and worked with greater stiffness, simplicity, and angularity—Byzantine architecture assumed, from the time of Justinian, a peculiarly pompous, Asiatic type. The dome prevailed; the ground-plan was composed of squares and circles. Ceremonies and mysteries borrowed from the Egyptians, Persians, and Romans, and the division of priests into different castes, required a different arrangement of the building. There was a place for the high and one for the low clergy; another for the laymen; the galleries were, in the old Jewish fashion, assigned to the women; and, lastly, there was a place for the penitent. These divisions and subdivisions induced confusion and disunion in the whole plan. Many of the Christian buildings have become, in their turn, Mahomedan mosques, just as the Roman basilicæ of old were turned into Christian churches.
The mightiest and the most gigantic of all Byzantine churches is undoubtedly that of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. First the building was a temple dedicated to ‘Holy Wisdom,’ in the ancient or classic meaning of the word. The edifice was destroyed by fire, and rebuilt by Justinian in five years (A.D. 532–537). Twenty years later it was much damaged by an earthquake. The injured dome was removed, raised somewhat higher upon strengthened counterfoils, and finished A.D. 563. The architects were Anthemis of Tralles, and Isidorus of Miletus. The ground-plan, ornamentation, and construction, aim in combination at one single result—surprise. There is a contradiction between lengths and circles, destroying all effect of simple perspective. The various cupolas, arches, and half-cupolas, connected with great technical skill, have no organically united life. An antediluvian world opens its gates to us. There is everywhere something astounding and gorgeous, but we are unable to discern the necessity for the existence of the parts, to form a coherent total. The galleries with their colonnades puzzle us. The outer square-form, overtowered by a mighty cupola, and by half-cupolas, is as incongruous as the ornamentation of the interior. The shafts of the columns are amongst the finest specimens of Roman architecture. Walls and pillars are adorned with variegated marble panels in mosaic patterns. The roofs of the dome and semi-domes are covered with gold mosaics, set in coloured ornamented frames, interspersed with figurative tapestry-like representations. Christ, saints, and prophets, are suspended in golden clouds. The effect on an untutored mind is perfectly intoxicating. Though we do not underrate the fully developed system of stone-roof construction, we must draw the attention of our readers to the heavy and shapeless capitals with the scarcely recognisable Ionic volutes, combined with Corinthian leaf-work; all outlines being smothered by over-ornamentation, destroying the beautiful effect of the antique by a clumsy impost. Byzantine architecture remained stationary for hundreds of years. The religious spirit went hand in hand with their stiff, lifeless art. Ignorance and credulity engendered in the East a boundless intolerance of all divergence of opinion, to which was added an equally boundless toleration of falsehoods and frauds, so soon as these means served to support the received opinions. An intellectual standstill was the result of these principles, and acted on art, rendering it in general as well as in detail an unwieldy mixture of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman forms, overloaded with Asiatic filigree composed of lines drawn from Christian symbolism. The Byzantine style of ornamentation will always be, like that of China, a strange element to us. However much the ingenuity of the winding, coiling, and recoiling lines, interspersed with small and large jewels, may interest us, though we may gaze at the profusion of gold mixed with gaudy colours with a kind of vague bewilderment, Byzantine art can never appeal to our sense of beauty.
A most important branch of Byzantine ornamentation was the treatment of metals. For flat decoration, in the style of embroidery, nothing can excel the use of metal, be it gold, silver, bronze, or steel, or a combination of all these. There was a fantastic originality in these productions which, when combined with an assiduous study of the antique, may aid us in many instances to produce excellent specimens of book-covers, patterns for ornamented salvers, caskets, cups, candlesticks, crosses, &c. Byzantine art, however, is the very opposite of classic art. Repose, as a consequence of the liveliest vibration of forms, and uniformity through a rich variation of patterns, are the real elements of Byzantine and Oriental art; in contradistinction to classic art, which is based on the authority of purpose and a correct subordination of details. This is the reason why the free but well-systematised ornaments of classic Greece were revived at this period with Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian textile patterns in metal, stone, or colours. Nothing could be more appropriate for this mode of ornamentation than leaf-work, flowers, creepers, &c., in the arrangement of which, the stern law of a well-regulated distribution of the repeated forms must be observed, to bring about a thorough balance between rest and vibration, variety and uniformity.
Whilst Byzantium was exhausting all its powers, and socially and artistically preparing to fall a prey to iconoclasts and Mahomedans; the movement, next in importance to the establishment of Christianity, viz. the migration of the Northern Teutons, took place.
We intend to group Kelts, Normans, Franks, Ostrogoths, and Westrogoths or Visigoths, Alemanni, Burgundians, Vinilians, Ingavorians, Istavorians, Vandals, Saxons, Anglo-Saxons, Markomanni, Rugi, Ubi, Gurgerni, Herulians, Bojoarians, Gepidi, Quadi, Marsingi, Sclavons, &c., all under the one name of North-European Ayrans. It is an imperative duty, with the art-historian, to group these scattered elements together, according to some visible signs, which serve to prove that, wherever we find an average facial angle of 90°, and an amount of brain averaging 92 cubic inches, we have to deal with the Aryan group of humanity. We avoid by this means divisions and sub-divisions ad infinitum, and the danger of losing ourselves in a labyrinth of petty national animosities and jealousies. Art, based on ethnology, and a study of climatological influences, has an immensely Christianising power. We see in the common language of forms, a common bond between those who formed themselves into small political communities, each in turn arrogating to themselves a kind of ‘chosen-people’ superiority, and turning their powers against that very mother-stock from which they received life, vigour, a common language, and a common mode of thinking on supernatural matters, and the phenomena of nature. The Kelts, Normans, Saxons, Danes, Swedes, Teutons, Germans (Garmans, Wahrmans, or Wehrmans, Brahmans), are all of the same stock. Separated at different periods from their Trans-and Cis-Himâlâyan ancestors, they lost more or less of their old religious notions, customs, and manners, according to their lesser or greater intermixture with the Turanian substrata of aborigines, who peopled the countries wherein they settled. Next to the aspect of the country in which they established themselves, its climate must be taken into consideration. The Aryan, snowed in for six months in Scandinavia, or living on the coasts of the Baltic, obliged to fight for every foot of fertile ground with a boisterous and obstinate nature, must have developed otherwise than the self-same Aryan who, as Kelt, took up his abode on an island everlastingly green with refreshing verdure, and was insulated from outer influences for long periods, being thus led to look upon this detached spot as the very centre of the universe around which the five parts of our globe, the myriads of suns, stars, planets, and comets revolved. Between the Aryan-Kelt and the Aryan-Frank or Norman, there will be a difference, brought about by the progress of time and a freer intermixture with other branches of the mother-stock who attained a higher kind of civilisation. The Aryans in India lost themselves in metaphysical abstractions, and made of fire, water, and air a theogony in which the anthropomorphic element was altogether effaced. The Aryans in the north of Europe, in their cosmogony, held to the original conceptions. They had to battle with fire, water, and air, in the form of volcanoes, seas, rain, snow, hail and storms; and finding that with their intellectual power they could master these elements, they soon deprived them of their individual godhead, and the whole earth, with its loves and passions, its kindnesses and destructive tendencies, was looked upon as a living being. They also knew of two regions on earth—not of a spiritually created paradise and hell, but of a Muspel-heim in the south, and a Nifel-heim in the north: the one giving warmth, heat, life; the other cold and death; the one light, the other night; the one summer, and the other winter. According to the Aryans of the north of Europe the first cosmical heat produced the giant Ymir, or Angelmir, who was nourished by the sacred cow Audumbla, from which ran four streams of milk, the four seasons. Like Brahmă, Ymir had a son and a daughter; the daughter grew out of his arm, and the son out of his foot. The Brahman was the outgrowth of Brahmă’s mouth: the Kshattriya sprung from his arms, the Vaisya grew out of his thighs, and the S’udra out of his feet. Ymir’s son became the father of the Hirmthursen (giants). By licking huge rocks of sandstone the cow became the mother of Buri. We thus pass from the pastoral into the agricultural state, and have the legend of Jupiter and Io before us. Buri had a son, Bor, who had three sons. Odin, Guodan, Wuodan, Wodan, the All-pervader—the ‘Allvater’ (father of all), Willi and We—air, fire and water. Wodan was also Baal, or the sun-god, in which capacity he had only one eye (the sun); he was also Apollo, the god of poetry, and of all things that love light and goodness. He was also the warfaring god who led the people to battle, and protected the valorous and virtuous. He had to fight against the giant Ymir with his brothers. A reminiscence of the wars of the Greek gods with the Titans, &c.; the Indian Vritaghna or the Persian Veretaghna, with the evil spirits of darkness, or the Egyptian Horus with Typhon. Out of the dead body of Ymir, the sons of Bor created everything. They formed the earth of his flesh, the rocks of his bones, the skull became heaven, and his blood furnished seas, rivers, and streams. They then took four dwarfs and placed Austri (in the East), Westri (in the West), Sudri (in the South), and Nordri (in the North), to guard the four corners of the heavens. Wuodan then embraced the earth, and created his mighty son Thor, Donar, Thunder, the protector of his mother-earth, and the enemy of the wicked. He sent his lightnings against giants, purified the air, dispersed frost and cold, killed the demons of heat, silenced the destructive storms, built bridges, made high-roads, furthered the intercourse of man with man, and promoted civilisation. The second son of Wuodan was Zio (Ziu, Zeus, Jovis, Síva, also Tyr-Tiu or Tusco), the god of battles, the destroyer. The third son was Fro (Froho, Freyr, free), the happy god, the god of love and marriage. Who does not recognise in Thor, Froh, and Ziu—Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—Jupiter, Apollo and Mars? As with the Aryans on the Ganges, so also with those on the Rhine, the Elbe or the Weser, and in Scandinavia, the passive element of nature was embodied in female divinities. Hertha, Nerthus (the earth), corresponds to S’ris, Hera, Ceres, Isis; Holda is closely allied with Hilda, Hela, Hell (the hidden), the goddess of death, Durga; and Freyja represents Venus, the goddess of love. These Aryans of northern Europe were known to the ancients as Hyperboræans. They were tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired, addicted to fighting, and sport. Some of them erected, in analogy with Buddhists and Egyptians, long thin towers reaching high into the air, pointing mystically upwards. The ‘Crux Ansata’ is reproduced in the Irish crosses, and their mode of ornamentation, with its twisted rope-like windings, and its serpent-like entanglements, points to Indian patterns of a very ancient type. When these Aryans of the north of Europe first dashed into the south, and destroyed the Roman colossus, they embraced Christianity with all the fervour of their unbiassed hearts. Entirely given up to the culture of the wild powers of nature, free from all metaphysical subtleties—the genuine men of wild oak, pine, and beech forests—they had no Vedas, no Homer, no Zoroaster, no Hermes, and no Moses to forget; they, in fact, only knew of an Allvater, because no two Teuton tribes held the same opinions on metaphysics. They had only one common ground, honest work—industry (at those times concentrated on warfare); and therefore they received Christianity with the greatest eagerness, and became the only upholders, expounders, and propagators of a religion for which their hearts were created. They recognised in Christ’s words, what they heard in whispers in their legends, and in the experiences of their wild life—that we ought to love others as ourselves. They added some of their old superstitions to the pure faith, which they found already much impregnated with Egyptian, Roman, and Indian signs and symbols. In the beginning, whilst Christianity was spreading all over Europe, they cultivated a mixture of North European and Roman forms in architecture as well as in ornamentation. They constructed their churches with plans borrowed from ancient times, and freely used geometrical symbols—for the sign of the Indian Trimurty, that of the shields of David or Solomon, and that of the Trinity, did not differ. The pentagram is still made on every loaf the Germans bake; it was a Druidical mystic sign, and now serves good Christians to protect their bread from being eaten by evil spirits. If we look at our Tudor roses, or St. Katherine’s wheels, we may clearly trace their origin to the Zodiacs of Egypt, used as signs of the Makrokosm. The Teuton minds found themselves suddenly dazzled by Christian theology. Greek, Alexandrian, Nestorian, Arian, Athanasian, Jewish and Christian mystics and casuists, already abounded in the sunny Muspel-heim, in which the Teutons settled, and they had to exchange their gloomy, foggy, and stormy Nifel-heim of reality, for a spiritual Nifel-heim of doctrinal controversies. They turned their elfs and sprites, their kobolds and gnomes, their spirits of air, water, and fire, into so many evil spirits. They looked upon the literature of the Greeks and Romans, of which they knew nothing, as the work of Beelzebub. Art was an enchantress of the senses, and sculpture invented by the father of all ‘lies,’ to deceive us with mock-creatures, to seduce men, and to cheat them of their share in everlasting salvation. In this gloomy spirit the newly converted Teuton Christians built churches, and, sunken in the most atrocious superstition, occupied themselves with the casting out of devils. Nature was, in fact, one grand dwelling-place for demons. Plague, poverty, and sickness, were attributed to the agency of the enemy of mankind. Epileptic fits and insanity were signs that the demon had taken possession of unfortunate wretches, who were either tormented or put to death. Satan, with his legions of devils, continually harassed mankind. To mortify and kill the body by fasting, chanting, whipping, praying, and self-inflicted mortification, was thought the only worthy and cheerful occupation of mankind. In addition to these religious tendencies, wars were waged with merciless cruelty, either in favour of, or against the new Christian superstition. A few so-called learned theologians studied the Jewish Cabala, Egyptian mysteries, Zoroastrian magical calculations, Greek sophisms, and Alexandrian Neo-Platonism. How could art have flourished under such circumstances? Incantations, astrological calculations, alchemical experiments, were the order of the day. The few learned men, whether architects or others, as soon as they produced anything astounding, were said to have received their ideas or plans, or their powers, from the devil. Who was to create any beautifully shaped product of art, surrounded by such misgivings?
This struggle lasted for several centuries; until, stimulated by movements in the far East, the Christian world left its secluded haunts in cloisters, monasteries, churches, and castles, and mixed once more with the outer world, and the whole gloomy medley of Christianised northern mythology had to yield to new forms in art.
Of this period we have a quantity of wood and ivory carvings, swords in the form of crosiers, and crosiers in the form of swords, cups and candlesticks, censers and pastoral staffs, diptichs and triptichs, recording scenes from the life of Christ or of some saint. From the third century down to the twelfth, year by year, artistic products of ornamentation grew worse and worse. In the third century there was some naturalness in the drapery, the folds being well executed; but in the fifth century the treatment of the human figure deteriorated; folds became more rope-like; Christ was represented as very young, with or without a beard, often retaining the form of Apollo, or of Hermes, carrying a lamb (the good shepherd). Bodies of saints and holy persons grew more and more emaciated; the anatomy was altogether neglected. After the Crusades in the twelfth century a marked improvement took place, but everything was then impregnated with Mahomedan forms. We should look with deep interest, and a sense of filial piety, on these primitive attempts of Christian art; the execution is bad, but the sentiments spread by their carvings, faulty designs, and poor ornamentations, are always excellent. The artists address us in a rough and unskilful manner, yet some spiritual truth awakens our better nature to exalted feelings of love. This, however, teaches us that a good feeling, a devout spirit, or a religious sentiment in the artists, is not alone enough to produce works of art.
Whilst Europe was expending its powers in the re-arrangement of the disturbed social and religious relations of humanity, a new movement arose which threatened to overwhelm the whole world.
The new movement produced new art forms, which in their turn serve to prove that art is a most important factor of civilisation. Till lately, the erroneous notion that art is a mere superfluous luxury has appeared to prevail with us. Art was placed by the ethicists in opposition to morals, and scientists either altogether ignored it, or regarded it as diametrically opposed to science—a pretty but useless toy. Art is as necessary to man as either ethics or science. For man is endowed with an emotional element, which must be satisfied and cultivated, in order to raise him to the dignity of a human being using his esthetical and intellectual faculties. It is vain to attempt to draw lines of demarcation, between our component material and spiritual elements. We recognise, or become conscious, through our senses; we sift the impressions made on our senses by the power of our intellect: and we regulate and arrange these impressions with the aid of our reason. We may, therefore, strictly treat art scientifically, as well as historically. For works of art may be considered under the following heads:—
(a.) As the concrete embodiments of man’s thoughts; the importance of the historical study of which cannot be too strongly insisted upon, for through it we can best become acquainted with the past, from a social and religious point of view.
(b.) As products that act upon our emotional, intellectual, and reasoning faculties. It is our duty to endeavour to ascertain what forms at different times, and under various impressions, acted most agreeably on us. We must learn to know the causes that produced certain art forms at certain periods, amongst certain people, under certain intellectual, social, and religious conditions. We must inquire why such forms flourished, decayed, or revived at different times.
(c.) We may examine the relations in which our subjective impressions stand to the products of art, and learn how far such sensations developed, in time and space, to lead us to the consciousness of beauty.
From pre-historic times to the advent of Christ humanity was always engaged as a busy artist. In studying the history of man we find that art ushers us into life, gladdens the child, inspires the youth, and interests the man. All our public actions, all our religious ceremonies, our Court pageantry, our battles and funerals, all our useful or useless surroundings, pass more or less through an artistic process. In analysing the historical development of humanity at large, or that of a nation, or even that of single individuals, we find that our sensations, intellect, and reason have always been at work to create something in their respective spheres. From the times of Plato to our own all great thinkers have more or less occupied themselves with the endeavour to establish the principles of beauty; just as from Thales of Miletus, and Demokritos to Bacon, Kant, Darwin, and Häckel, they have sought to discover the principle of truth; or from Manû, Confucius, Moses, the Apostles, and Mahomet, to our own theologians, they have striven to decide what is right or wrong. Art worked synchronically with these endeavours, and its products are as numerous and variegated as our philosophical systems, or our creeds and sects. Moreover, works of art are, in many instances, far less perishable than works of mere speculation. It becomes an imperative duty, therefore, to study historically one of the most important branches of human activity and ingenuity, which furnishes us in its very products with a record in lasting forms, with at least the same ardour, earnestness, and veneration, with which we devote ourselves to more varying, changing, and perishable products. One fact must be obvious to every reader of these pages—that real art has so exalted a sphere that it can only exist to perfection wherever sciences and morals are highly cultivated.