Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/292

 Golden Masks. 239 the bull's anatomical construction, or the same sureness of hand as the master himself. The works of the Mycenian plastic art, wherein are represented its favourite themes, be it the gods whom the people worshipped, or the chiefs to whom allegiance was paid, have already been passed in review. We next come to those instances which have neither the religious character of the idols, nor the historic or expressive value of scenes such as those which the sculptor modelled with varying skill on the stelee of the royal cemetery, the blades of princely weapons, and the goblets used by tribal chiefs at their banquets. In this category are comprised the golden masks, in their twofold artistic and sepulchral character ; that is to say, images which, like the bas-relief of the Lions Gate, have a symbolic and heraldic significance, along with the objects taken from the living world to adorn instruments, furniture, and jewellery. Although this art started with the unlovely shapes of which many specimens have passed before the reader, it ended in being quite able to cope with the human and animal form, and conscious of the resources which would accrue therefrom as a decorative element, often using it with happy results. Golden Masks. Of all the objects which Schliemann brought to light in 1876 at Mycense, none created so great a surprise among archaeologists as the golden masks which he found in the third, fourth, and fifth graves of the acropolis.^ The reason of their being is not far to seek. They were designed to preserve the features and general outline of the dead, slowly but surely falling away behind their gold veil ; their purpose, in fact, was to stay the law of nature. The masks show us a life-size human visage plastically modelled. The faces they covered are now reduced to dust, but at the time of their discovery bits of the skull still adhered to the gold plate, proving that the masks had been placed there
 * Schliemann, Mycence; Schuchardt, Schliemann' s Ausgrabungen.