Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/480

 CHAPTER IV. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MYCENIAN ARCHITECTURE. Btiilding Materials. Our wanderings up and down the pleasant shores of the i^gean and the isles dotted on its vast bosom, where the monu- ments which form the subject-matter of this study are unevenly distributed, are now ended. The time has come to pursue our investigations on another plan ; we must try to define, for the whole period about which we are busy, the methods and style of the architect, the painter, and the sculptor — all the artificers who, in some way or another, helped in fashioning the materials to their hand, and impressing upon them the shapes which they had previously thought out, in order that they might administer to the manifold needs of man and please the eye as well. As already remarked, the close analysis to which we shall subject the most evanescent remains of this industry, will put us in a position to offer some restorations, designed, as heretofore, to bring home to the reader the aspect and distinctive peculiarities of one of those units wherein is summed up, at a particular time in the existence of a nation, the effort of its plastic genius. The building materials used by the primitive builder are stone, wood, and clay. Stone was found in great abundance in the Troad, in Boeotia, and Argolis. Every height bounding the horizon of the latter country has its sides covered with stone masses, out of which the Tirynthian and Mycenian walls were built. There, too, were erected those monuments, at once imposing by their mass, their dimensions, and their elaborate