Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/120

 ioo HISTORY <>i- ART IN PIKKNICTA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. Phd-nician workmen, ve do so because its treatment is different from that of any known local workshop, and because the salient features of its decoration harmonize at all points with those with which we have become familiar in our study of monuments drawn from Phiunicia proper and with the few pieces that bear Semitic inscriptions. In order to widen our field of choice we shall bring back to the quays of Tyre and Sidon the objects carried by their commerce to the four corners of the ancient world ; but, before admitting a vase or a trinket into our museum, we shall look at every side of it, and reject it unless it bears the undoubted stamp of some industrial centre of the Phoenicians. The Greek genius soon emancipated itself from the precepts and example of Phoenicia ; it created an art far superior to that of its masters, an art of great and commanding originality ; but it was otherwise with some of the pupils of Tyre and Sidon. Neither the Cypriots nor the Hebrews succeeded in shaking off the ascendency of the Phoenician types. At Jerusalem, as at Golgos, types were modified to a certain degree, for in the one place the faith of the people was different, in the other their social habits and the materials of which their artists and artisans made use ; but in neither country did they examine nature closely enough, in neither were their inventive faculties sufficiently alive, for their art to win a really national and original physiognomy. Cypriot art and Jewish art are no more than varieties, or, as a grammarian would say, dialects, of the art of Phoenicia. We shall therefore include them in the art history of the famous nation on the Syrian coast. We shall also have to devote a short chapter to some structures and bronze figures of a quite peculiar character, which are found only in Sardinia. The fantastic statuettes and other objects which have been met with in the ruins of the Sardinian towers are, no doubt, the products of a local and indigenous art, but that art was only developed on contact with the Phoenicians and while they were masters of the seaboard. As we shall have no occasion to revert to these rude works in the sequel of our history, our examination of them will be given in the form of an appendix to the present volume. From all that we have said, our readers will perceive that our present task is less easy than either of the two which have preceded it. The art history of Phoenicia has many divisions and subdivisions, and it presents another difficulty : its limits are