Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/297

 244 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. too are the eyebrows and moustache, and one is somewhat surprised that the eyelashes should have been omitted. The excavators have pointed out the marked differences observable between the several masks ; they recognized that those who made them had not aimed at reproducing a conventional type consecrated by tradition, but that they represent the likeness of the deceased whose face they covered. Whilst the preparations for the funeral were proceeding, the body of the great man, preserved from decomposition by partial embalming, was laid out in state ; meanwhile the artificer worked hard in order that the mask should bear a strong likeness to the defunct who was about to be covered with it. The task was not an easy one ; but it gave him an opportunity for exercising himself in the rendering of the human face, where he had yet much to learn. The mask on Fig. 366 shows what steady work has done for him ; its con- struction evinces considerable skill, and must have recalled the prince's physiognomy to his friends and kinsmen. We have here a portrait in the strict sense of the word. Schliemann says that in the fourth grave he alighted upon a mask bearing a lion's head.^ But in this he was mistaken ; ^ the plate never covered the face of a dead man. Close inspection has revealed the fact that the mask had been fixed to a smooth surface, likely enough a piece of wood, by means of the horizontal plates projecting from the lion's head. Hence the probability that it may have served as a device for those shields as are depicted on many an intaglio. The Lions Gate. The stimulus which prompted the Mycenian artist in his attempts to take likenesses of his sovereign was the respectful regard he felt for the royal countenance, and his desire to rescue it from oblivion. In the same manner, later on, the most monu- mental work of the Mycenian sculptor sprang from the pride of hereditary chiefs, and their desire to strike the imagination of men. In either instance the end the artist had in view was not ^ Schliemann, Mycence,
 * ScHUCHARDT, Schliemant^s Ausgrabungen.