A History of Greek Art by F. B. Tarbell (e book reader online .txt) 📖

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A History of Greek Art

With an Introductory Chapter on Art in Egypt and Mesopotamia BY F. B. TARBELL

PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

PREFACE.

The art of any artistically gifted people may be studied with various purposes and in various ways. One man, being himself an artist, may seek inspiration or guidance for his own practice; another, being a student of the history of civilization, may strive to comprehend the products of art as one manifestation of a people’s spiritual life; another may be interested chiefly in tracing the development of artistic processes, forms, and subjects; and so on. But this book has been written in the conviction that the greatest of all motives for studying art, the motive which is and ought to be strongest in most people, is the desire to become acquainted with beautiful and noble things, the things that “soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.” The historical method of treatment has been adopted as a matter of course, but the emphasis is not laid upon the historical aspects of the subject. The chief aim has been to present characteristic specimens of the finest Greek work that has been preserved to us, and to suggest how they may be intelligently enjoyed. Fortunate they who can carry their studies farther, with the help of less elementary handbooks, of photographs, of casts, or, best of all, of the original monuments.

Most of the illustrations in this book have been made from photographs, of which all but a few belong to the collection of Greek photographs owned by the University of Chicago. A number of other illustrations have been derived from books or serial publications, as may be seen from the accompanying legends. In several cases where cuts were actually taken from secondary sources, such as Baumeister’s “Denkmaler des klassischen Altertums,” they have been credited to their original sources. A few architectural drawings were made expressly for this work, being adapted from trustworthy authorities, viz.: Figs. 6, 51, 61, and 64. There remain two or three additional illustrations, which have so long formed a part of the ordinary stock-in trade of handbooks that it seemed unnecessary to assign their origin.

The introductory chapter has been kindly looked over by Dr. J. H.

Breasted, who has relieved it of a number of errors, without in any way making himself responsible for it. The remaining chapters have unfortunately not had the benefit of any such revision.

In the present reissue of this book a number of slight changes and corrections have been introduced.

Chicago, January, 1905.

CONTENTS.

I. ART IN EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA

II. PREHISTORIC ART IN GREECE

III. GREEK ARCHITECTURE

IV. GREEK SCULPTURE—GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

V. THE ARCHAIC PERIOD OF GREEK SCULPTURE, FIRST HALF: 625 (?)-550 B.C.

VI. THE ARCHAIC PERIOD OF GREEK SCULPTURE. SECOND HALF: 550-480 B. C.

VII. THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD OF GREEK SCULPTURE. 480-4506. C.

VIII. THE GREAT AGE OF GREEK SCULPTURE. FIRST PERIOD: 450-400 B. C.

IX. THE GREAT AGE OF GREEK SCULPTURE. SECOND PERIOD: 400-323 B. C.

X. THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD OF GREEK SCULPTURE. 323-146 B. C.

XI. GREEK PAINTING

A HISTORY OF GREEK ART.

CHAPTER I.

ART IN EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA.

The history of Egypt, from the time of the earliest extant monuments to the absorption of the country in the Roman Empire, covers a space of some thousands of years. This long period was not one of stagnation. It is only in proportion to our ignorance that life in ancient Egypt seems to have been on one dull, dead level. Dynasties rose and fell. Foreign invaders occupied the land and were expelled again. Customs, costumes, beliefs, institutions, underwent changes. Of course, then, art did not remain stationary.

On the contrary, it had marked vicissitudes, now displaying great freshness and vigor, now uninspired and monotonous, now seemingly dead, and now reviving to new activity. In Babylonia we deal with perhaps even remoter periods of time, but the artistic remains at present known from that quarter are comparatively scanty. From Assyria, however, the daughter of Babylonia, materials abound, and the history of that country can be written in detail for a period of several centuries. Naturally, then, even a mere sketch of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian art would require much more space than is here at disposal. All that can be attempted is to present a few examples and suggest a few general notions. The main purpose will be to make clearer by comparison and contrast the essential qualities of Greek art, to which this volume is devoted.

I begin with Egypt, and offer at the outset a table of the most important periods of Egyptian history. The dates are taken from the sketch prefixed to the catalogue of Egyptian antiquities in the Berlin Museum. In using them the reader must bear in mind that the earlier Egyptian chronology is highly uncertain. Thus the date here suggested for the Old Empire, while it cannot be too early, may be a thousand years too late. As we come down, the margin of possible error grows less and less. The figures assigned to the New Empire are regarded as trustworthy within a century or two.

But only when we reach the Saite dynasty do we get a really precise chronology.

Chief Periods of Egyptian History:

OLD EMPIRE, with capital at Memphis; Dynasties 4-5 (2800-2500 B.

C. or earlier) and Dynasty 6.

MIDDLE EMPIRE, with capital at Thebes; Dynasties 11-13 (2200-1800

B. C. or earlier).

NEW EMPIRE, with capital at Thebes; Dynasties 17-20 (ca. 1600-1100

B. C.).

SAITE PERIOD; Dynasty 26 (663-525 B. C.).

One of the earliest Egyptian sculptures now existing, though certainly not earlier than the Fourth Dynasty, is the great Sphinx of Gizeh (Fig. 1). The creature crouches in the desert, a few miles to the north of the ancient Memphis, just across the Nile from the modern city of Cairo. With the body of a lion and the head of a man, it represented a solar deity and was an object of worship. It is hewn from the living rock and is of colossal size, the height from the base to the top of the head being about 70

feet and the length of the body about 150 feet. The paws and breast were originally covered with a limestone facing. The present dilapidated condition of the monument is due partly to the tooth of time, but still more to wanton mutilation at the hands of fanatical Mohammedans. The body is now almost shapeless. The nose, the beard, and the lower part of the head dress are gone. The face is seamed with scars. Yet the strange monster still preserves a mysterious dignity, as though it were guardian of all the secrets of ancient Egypt, but disdained to betray them “The art which conceived and carved this prodigious statue,” says Professor Maspero [Footnote: Manual of Egyptian Archaeology second edition 1895 page 208] “was a finished art, an art which had attained self mastery, and was sure of its effects. How many centuries had it taken to arrive at this degree of maturity and perfection?” It is impossible to guess. The long process of self-schooling in artistic methods which must have preceded this work is hidden from us. We cannot trace the progress of Egyptian art from its timid, awkward beginnings to the days of its conscious power, as we shall find ourselves able to do in the case of Greek art. The evidence is annihilated, or is hidden beneath the sand of the desert, perhaps to be one day revealed. Should that day come, a new first chapter in the history of Egyptian art will have to be written.

There are several groups of pyramids, large and small at Gizeh and elsewhere, almost all of which belong to the Old Empire. The three great pyramids of Gizeh are among the earliest. They were built by three kings of the Fourth Dynisty, Cheops (Chufu), Chephren (Chafre), and Mycerinus (Menkere) They are gigantic sepulchral monuments in which the mummies of the kings who built them were deposited. The pyramid of Cheops (Fig. 1, at the right), the largest of all, was originally 481 feet 4 inches in height, and was thus doubtless the loftiest structure ever reared in pre-Christian times. The side of the square base measured 755 feet 8

inches. The pyramidal mass consists in the main of blocks of limestone, and the exterior was originally cased with fine limestone, so that the surfaces were perfectly smooth. At present the casing is gone, and instead of a sharp point at the top there is a platform about thirty feet square. In the heart of the mass was the granite chamber where the king’s mummy was laid. It was reached by an ingenious system of passages, strongly barricaded.

Yet all these precautions were ineffectual to