Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/851

This page needs to be proofread.
ARCHÆOLOGY.
729
ARCHÆOLOGY.


interest, and gives us much light on painting on a larger scale, as well as on contemporary manners and customs. The rise of Attic black- figured ware has already been mentioned. As a special form of this we uuist mention particu- larly the fine Panathcnaic amphoras, with figures of the anned Athena, in which the sacred oil was presented to victors at the Panathenaic games. These vases are interesting as being continued in an archaistic form into the Fourth Century (cf. Baumeister, DenKmiiler, art. I'anathenaia) . A special class of peculiarly Attic vases are the beautiful white Iccylhi (oil or perfume flasks), which were interred with the dead, and which contain scenes from the burial, and also from the daily life, exquisitely depicted in colors on the white slip with which the body of the vase is covered. The series begins early in the Fifth Century, and continues during the Fourth, in the variations of style throwing much light on tile development of painting, and form- ing an interesting parallel to the contemporary series of gi'ave reliefs.

In the "red-figiu-ed" ware, which far surpasses in artistic merit the black-figured, and of which the rise as a separate variety has already been mentioned, scenes from the myths, while not excluded, yet make room for delightful bits of social and domestic life. In the development of this style the "cyli.x," or shallow cup on a rather high foot, plays an important part, especially in the early ]iart of the Fifth Century, when such masters Hourished as Euphronios, Dnris, Hiero and Brvgos. See Hartwig, Griechische Meister- xchiiloi' (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1893).

Various grotesque forms of vases, such as the rhyton (in the shape of a head, generally that of an animal), later came into use, and we find numerous examples of the pj'xis, or woman's toilet-box. But the art gradually sank, and vase-])ainting was fast dying out at the begin- ning of the Alexandrian Period.

In the domain of numismatics we must brief- ly mention the periods of transitional art (B.C. 480-41.5) and of finest art (B.C. 415-33()). We have here not to deal particularly with Athenian coinage, which, like the Panathenaic amphoras, keeps a designedly rude and archaic character in order to maintain its position with foreign peo- ples, with whom the Attic State came in contact through its wide maritime relations and com- mercial dealings, but rather with such beauti- ful work as that of the Syracusan die-cutters Euanietus and Cimon, in the period subsequent to B.C. 41.5, whose splendid decadrachms are justly reckoned among the highest achievements in this class. We may trace, however, through the coins of this entire epoch that same gradual mastery of material and development from the more severe to the more graceful, which is marked in other lines of art. But coinage still maintains the sacred symbolism which character- ized it from the beginning, the purely human and individual element appearing distinctly only in the special marks of magistrates and mint- masters, which are kept subordinate to the main design.

V. PERron OF Hetxentc Dissemination and Decline.— The development of Maeedon under Philip and the conquests of Alexander change the entire aspect of the Greek world. We have henceforth to consider a Hellenism synonymous with eivilization rather than the geographical Hellas with her outlying colonies.

In Greece itself the greatest influence is exerted at the opening of this period by Lysippus of Sieyon, who not only continued the prestige of the Argive-Sicyonian school, but also introduced a new canon in statuary, nuiking the figure more slender and the head proportionally smaller than in the preceding art and forming a marked con- trast to the canon of Polycletus. His work is known to us from copies of his "Apox}-omenos" (a youth scraping himself with the strigil); and a marble copy at Delplii of a series of stat- ues of the family of Daochos, of which the bronze originals were at Pharsalia. He was also a sort of court-seulptor to Alexander the Great, as Apelles was his painter. His influ- ence extends immediately to Rhodes in Chares of Lindus, one of his i)est-known pupils, and artist of the fanuius "Colossus of Rhodes." The splendid "Victory of Samothrace," now in the Louvre, which may be dated about the begin- ning of the Third Century, is one of the great- est monuments of this period, and deserves to be ranked with such splendid figures as the "Victory of Pa'onius of Mende,' set up at Olympia a ceri- tnr3' or more earlier, and with the Victories from the balustrade of the Temple of Athena Nike, at Athens.

The Perganiene art, cultivated especially under the .Attalid kings, and of which we see such as- tonishing examples in the frieze of the gi-eat altar of Zeus at Pergamon (q.v.), of the earlier part of the Second Century B.C., representing a co- lossal gigantomachy, exhibits great mastery of technique, violence of action, and the free" e.x;- pressimi of physical suffering, the two latter be- ing qualities of sculpture rather than of painting. Somewhat earlier than the great altar are the well-known statues of the "Dying Gaul" (mis- called "Gladiator"), and the Gaul and his wife in the Ludovisi Gallery. As intimated above, it is the grand finale' of Greek sculp- ture, in which this art still appears great, though overstepping its due bounds. To this period also belongs probably the development of the Rhodian School, though some scholars pre- fer to date the great product of that school, the Laoeoiin group, now in the "atican, at the end of the Second Century or beginning of the First Century B.C. To this school in its Asiatic de- velopment belongs the great work of Apollonius and Tauriscus of Tralles, the "Farnese Bull." Single statues which seem to belong to this period, but cannot be assigned with certainty to any definite artist, are the "Aphrodite of Melos," one of the most beautiful works of the later classical art; the "Apollo Belvedere" (q.v.); and the "Torso of the Belvedere," a noble fragment, whose correct restoration, though often at- tempted, has not yet been found. To this period also belongs the full development of genre scenes, though this begins still earlier. Such are the group of the "Boy and the Goose," the "Drunken Old Woman," the "Fisherman," and especially the large mass of reliefs, which seem to owe their origin to Alexandria, and to be the product of the same tendencies which led to the bucolic poetry. Portraiture also flourished, not only in statues and busts of the living, but in ideal portraits of the great men of the past, as Homer and Anacreon.

With the painting of the Alexandrian Period