Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/305

 252 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. If we have devoted so much of our time to the study of this bas-reh'ef, it is because it is unique of its kind. Apart from the stelae of the shaft-graves, this group is the only known work where the Mycenian sculptor has essayed to model figures on a large scale. On the other hand, the excavations have yielded a number of objects, certainly much simpler in character than the daggers or the Vaphio vases, but where the human and animal form has been introduced in a purely ornamental spirit. These objects, from their nature and destination, are rather industrial than artistic productions. We could, then, have placed them, with equal propriety, in the tablet, pottery, or metal series. Inasmuch as they help us to understand how this art interpreted the human form, some examples are engraved in the following pages. The Human Figure as Decorative Element. As the eye of the reader fell on the idol series, he cannot have failed to notice how utterly incapable was the Trojan artisan of the second village to draw from life. In the work he has handed down to us, we find little more than one statuette where some sort of attempt has been made to reproduce the proportions and form of woman (Fig. 291). The statuette, though infinitely rude, has been recognized by us not as native work, but either as imported from without or badly copied on a foreign model. The next is a bronzy igure, if possible even more barbarous ; its pur- pose is not clear. ^ Yet the artisan, in his own way, showed himself susceptible to woman's beauty. Rude representations of the human face seen on the clay vases from Troy were suggested by his innate craving to recall her dear image. Such would be the specimen on Fig. 448, where eyebrows, nose, and eyes have been modelled in relief. As a rule the mouth, both here and elsewhere, is omitted. A third piece shows us protuberant breasts, and a vulva, indicated by an incised line and bounded by a salient seam (Fig. 244). This last detail is absent from another jar, but the ornament and dress are represented by a necklet about the neck, and by a .scarf which surrounds the bust and is crossed in ^ SCHLIEMANN, IHoS,