Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/247

 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CYPRIOT SCULPTURE. to be met with in Cyprus (Fig. 78). Now, this head is positively ugly ; the eyes are large and prominent, the cheekbones high, the nose thick and round, the mouth small, but without refinement. 1 The inferiority of the type may well have helped to prevent the Cypriot artists from copying it accurately ; they may have thought to embellish and improve it with the help of works by masters whose inspiration had been drawn from purer and nobler models. In the course of our study we have had to notice monuments of very different ages, and it is natural that we should now ask between what extreme dates the development of Cypriot art should be inclosed. In Cyprus, as elsewhere, the beginnings escape us, but we have no ground for believing that the soil of the island has yielded monuments older than the Phoenician occupa- tion, which took place some thirteen or fourteen centuries, perhaps, before our era. In spite of the primitive character of their work- manship, the statuettes found in the cemetery of Alambra show divine types related to those of Asia. Some of these figures may date therefore from the remote age mentioned above, but their forms were consecrated by tradition, and survived for a very long time without any important changes. As for stone statues, such as those found chiefly at Amathus and Golgos, we believe them, on the whole, to be far less ancient ; between the figures on which the archaism of Greece has left its trace and those betraying the influence of Egypt and Assyria the differences of treatment are so slight that it is impossible to suppose they were turned out at any vast interval of time. There is one statue, even, in which we find details borrowed from Egypt and Assyria used side by side with others taken from Greece (Fig. 83). The oldest of these things may be assigned to about the eighth century, and we have made it our general rule to insert nothing here which is certainly later than the fifth, although many a Cypriot statue of the same class may well belong to a much later date. If we had undertaken to write a complete history of Cypriot art, there would then be good reason to follow it down to the 1 Among those archaeologists who have examined this type in all its varieties with the greatest attention, we must not forget M. J. GESLIN. Although we cannot accept all his views, we have consulted with profit his Etudes sur FArt Cypriote and its illustrations (in vols. i. and ii. of the Mu& archcologiquc of M. Caix de Saint Amour; Paris, 8vo, 1876-1879).