Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/390

Characteristics of Mycenian Sculpture. 337 to the other! The following detail will suffice to establish the superiority of the metal-worker. We have all read in Homer of the war-chariot drawn by a team of two horses ; but only one is figured on the stelae, the other is to be understood. On the contrary, in the narrow field of the bezel of a ring, the goldsmith has succeeded in putting behind the first horse the head and croup of the second (Fig. 413). In that period the influence of the metal-worker is felt every- where. The ornaments filling the space not occupied by the image are taken from gold, silver, and bronze pieces. If in the second period in the life of the Mycenians the lions that watch over the citadel gate were endowed with a just proportion and a certain nobility of aspect, it is because the stone-carver had learnt his lesson of the goldsmith. Yet this was the same type which he had so imperfectly rendered in the least awkward of the sepulchral reliefs. Where should he have learnt how to improve his lion figures, except from those which the engraver introduced into his vases, daggers, and gems ? To the gold- smith also must be ascribed those rare bronze statuettes that make their appearance towards the close of the Mycenian period.^ The artisans who supplied the princes with those show weapons and artistic objects which filled their treasuries employed this or that metal according to circumstances, sometimes introducing them all into one piece. Do not we see Homer calling Laerkes — whom Nestor summons to Pylos, that he may gild the horns of his oxen — •)(aL'Kxsx)g (bronze-worker) and XP^^^X^^^ (gold-smelter) indiffer- ently ? ^ A gem-engraver is after all no more than a metal-worker, or at most his disciple and continuator ; if we allow, as seems probable, that the taste for chiselled gems became general, it follows that glyptic art developed into a separate craft, and turned out seals and personal ornaments without number. Engraving in metal led the way to intaglio work. The best representative, then, of this archaic culture is the craftsman who modelled the Vaphio goblets and certain gems ; he is the precursor of that grand art of sculpture in which Greece will excel. An intaglio from Vaphio, representing a bull attacked 1 To the few bronze statuettes which we have reproduced (Figs. 345, 349, 350, 351, 388) I have only to add a small goat of the same metal that comes from a grave at lalysos {Mykenische Vaseii), ^ Odyssey. VOL. II. Z