date are not wanting, not only of figures in the round, but also of reliefs, which appear to have been largely used for the decoration of the flat surfaces of walls and friezes. The earliest of all date from a quite prehistoric period, and are mostly small idol-like figures of the rudest possible form, having an almost shapeless trunk with stick -like projections for the limbs, and the breasts and eyes roughly indicated by round dots. They are usually decorated with coarse stripes or cheques in ochre colours. Examples of these have been found at Hissarlik (Troad), in Cyprus and other islands, and in the citadel of Tiryns in 1884-85 by Dr Schliemann and Dr Dorpfeld. Later but still very archaic figures, 2 or 3 inches high, have been exhumed in many parts of the vEgean Islands; some of these are stiff seated figures of deities, links between Oriental and Hellenic art, like the statues of the Sacred Way at Branchidse (south of Miletus). Comparatively few specimens exist of the best period of Greek art—the 5th century.[1] A relief in the Louvre (about 18 by 12 inches) with a pierced background, dating from the first half of the 5th century, represents two female mourners at a sepulchral stele, one standing and the other seated; under the foot of the latter is inscribed AAEKTP. On the other side of the stele are two youths (the Dioscuri) standing by a horse. The whole design is simple, but very graceful, and the modelling is skilfully treated in very low relief. The colouring blue, red, white, and dark brown is well preserved. This relief was pressed in a mould, and was intended to be attached to a wall, probably that of a tomb, as a votive offering to the dead.[2]
In most cases the terra-cotta figures and reliefs occur in or close by tombs, but it is only in comparatively rare instances that the subjects represented have any reference to death. Another large class have been found in the vicinity of temples, and are probably votive offerings, such as the small statuettes of horses from the acropolis of Athens, now in the Louvre. In other cases, as at Halicarnassus, great quantities of small figures were buried under a temple, probably to purify the site, as was done in Egypt under the later dynasties, when many hundred figures of bronze were sometimes buried under one building. Owing to the fact that the statuettes found scattered in and round tombs have frequently their heads broken off, Pettier and Reinach have suggested that they were brought as offerings to the dead and their heads were broken off by the mourners at the side of the tomb. Rayet believes that this practice was a sort of survival of the custom of sacrificing female and boy slaves at the tombs of the dead. In many cases, however, the figures are intact, and it is probable that many of the tombs were broken open and rifled long ago, which would explain the mutilated and scattered condition of the figures. The tombs Tanagra of Tanagra have yielded by far the richest finds of these statu- figures, the specimens being very remarkable for their es> beauty. These exquisite statuettes do not (in most cases) represent deities or heroic personages, but the homely every-day life of the Greeks, treated with great simplicity and evident realism: they are in plastic art what in painting would be called genre,[3] and in their strong human interest and naturalistic pathos bring us in closer contact with the life and personalities of the past than any more ambitious style of art could possibly do. Moreover, they prove more clearly even than the great plastic works in bronze and marble how deeply a feeling for beauty and a knowledge of art must have penetrated the whole mass of the people. Their immense number shows that they must have been far from costly, within the reach of every one, and certainly not the production of any famous sculptors. Nevertheless, sketchy as they are in treatment and often faulty in detail, they are in pose, in motive, and in general effect works of the highest beauty, full of the most inimitable grace, and evidently the production of men in whom the best qualities of the sculptor were innate by a sort of natural birthright. Several small figures from Myrina (Mysia) have the artist's name in scribed on them; but signatures of this sort are rare. 4 It is impossible to describe the many subjects treated. Only a few examples can be mentioned. Among single figures the most frequent are those of girls stand ing or seated in an immense variety of pose, and with plentiful drapery arranged in countless methods, showing the great taste with which a Greek lady could Fia 1 -. dispose the folds of Subjects and de signs. Statuette of a girl and infant Eros from Tanagra. (St Petersburg.) her ample pallium, whether it hung in graceful loops or was wound closely round the figure or formed a hood-like veil over the head. In some the lady holds a leaf-shaped FIG. 2. Aphrodite and cupids. The pendant hung round the neck of Aphrodite is gilt. (South Kensington Museum.) fan, or is looking in a circular mirror, or holds a ball ready for the game. Many have a strange broad hat, probably of straw, which does not fit on the head, but must have 4 See Gaz. des B.-Arts, xxxiii., 1886, p. 278.
- ↑ A good example of a terra-cotta relief of the first part of the 5th century B.C. is figured in vol. ii. p. 352.
- ↑ Some very beautiful fragments of reliefs in terra-cotta are preserved in the museums of the Louvre, of Copenhagen, and the Kircheriano in Rome. These represent on a small scale parts of Phidias's Panathenaic frieze, which have all the appearance of being works of the 5th century B.C., but may possibly be forgeries or Roman copies; see Waldstein, Art of Pheidias, Cambridge, 1885.
- ↑ In some the most homely sort of genre is represented, a girl milking a cow, a cook or a barber at his work, &c. Even portrait figures occur, as, for example, a wonderfully lifelike group of a man and his wife in the collection of Mr Ionides, recently lent to the South Kensington Museum.
