Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/35

 14 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. to have laid the rock bare. This mode of operation has been so far satisfactory, that on many a spot, beneath the remains of the classic age, the simple and touching effort of the primitive artisan has been recovered. However clumsy, we feel greatly interested in this artisan ; to collect whose handiwork, even the most fragmentary, rude, and insignificant, we have spared neither cost nor trouble. In him we recognize and love the ancestor of the great artists of the Periclean age, as well as that of Alexander. All these shapeless stone and clay idols, these plastered and tinted pieces, these strange jewelled objects, these unglazed chips of pottery with geometrical decoration, every one of them, all that recent discoveries have brought out, at great cost, of shafts sunk at Troy, Tiryns, or Mycenae, what else are they except the first links in the chain at the end of which are found the statues of Pheidias and Lysippus, the vases of. Euphromios and Sosias, the paintings of Polygnotos and Zeuxis, and the intaglios of Pergoteles ? It would be impossible therefore to withhold our interest from works which in their precession of masterpieces prepared the budding forth of these, in that they all were the offspring of the same mind, and as it were the same bosom, just as the flower is in the bud, just as the first leaflets that open the ground in which the seed was put, already contain the whole future plant. The burden laid upon us is to bring within the range of our vision, in all its integrity, the long series of notions and essayals the final result of which was to make the Hellenic artist so supreme a master of execu- tion, that he could make light of difficulties arising from stubborn materials, bending them to his will, and compelling them to be the faithful interpreters of thought. This is why, having under- taken this research, we are obliged to go on until we reach the goal, the stone and bone age, the age of pottery made by the hand unaided by the circular table, ill-baked in the open by means of the irregular heat of faggots. Those who have been led by the natural bent of their mind and training to make classical studies their favourite pursuits, can scarcely help having their eyes and faculties dazzled by the poetic and artistic splendours of Hellas ; they need make an effort in order to realize that time was when the Hellenes were mere savages. On this head doubt is no longer possible: the tribes whose manners and daily life we may guess from the lower strata of