Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/180

92 NOTICES OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS. SPECIMENS OF THE GEOMETRICAL MOSAIC OF THE MIDDLE AGES. With a brief Historical Notice of tlie Art, By Digby Wyatt, Architect. Messrs. Day and Son, 17, Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Folio, London, 1848. Considering the very important position occupied by the vicissitudes of this favoured child, in any general history of the great family of the Arts — reflecting on the manifest importance of the revival of so graceful an ele- ment in structiu'al decoration ; and remembering that almost from month to month, in Archaeological Magazines and local papers, public attention is drawn to the subject by the announcement of incessant exhumations of specimens, interesting alike to the architect, the antiquarian, and the educated world at large, we cannot but wonder at the very small amount of knowledge commonly current, of either the technical conditions, Esthe- tic character, or historical and ethnographical importance of the art of mosaic generally. Though in the portly volumes of the late indefatigable Samuel Lysons, in those of Sir Kichard Colt Hoare, Mr. Artis, " Old Fowler," and in the Gentleman's Magazine, Archaeologia, and many other publications, very admirable delineations and scattered notices of nearly all the most remark- able fragments discovered in England may be found, still we are not aware of any attempt hitherto made to classify them in any way ; to describe their alliance with existing remains of more perfect workmanship in other countries ; or to trace their agreement with, or departure from, the technical process which the accordant voice of ancient writers and modern commen- tators have fixed as the grammar of the Art — the ne plus ultra of its mechanical perfection. While the history of the more ancient varieties of mosaic has been thus scantily popularised, the narrative of its Medieval phaseology has been even more imperfectly told. With the exception of a chapter (admirably written) in Mr. Hope's Essay on Architecture, and a few learned notices contri- buted by Mr. Gunn, it is (as far as we have been able to discover) only very recently that any minute description or analysis has been attempted in this country. By far the most copious, learned, and detailed of modern English writers on the subject, is Lord Lindsay, in his " Christian Art." In that valuable work his lordship has presented us with pictures sketched with a masterly hand — graphic indeed, though only in outline. He has thus indicated the successive Byzantine modifications of ancient Iloinan practice — the dra- matic, conventional and symbolical character of the incidents and objects selected for delineation — and the historical, biographical, and artistic con- nection of each phase, in the cycle of its existence. The one gre^t fault, however, of his thesis is, that for an introductory work, or one in which an extremely intricate subject is presented to the public, for very probably the first time, the author's theories rather overshadow his matter, and prevent the inquirer from obtaining that just idea of the objective character of the existing monuments, which is absolutely necessary to him as a foundation on which to raise the superstructure of his own subjective theorisation. This deficit, not only in Lord Lindsay's, but in almost every other exist- ing essay on the art of mosaic, Mr. Wyatt has endeavoured to make good ;