Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/373

 320 Primitive Greeci: : Mycenian Art. handled with a lively feeling for the leading features of the form. The natural breadth which the native artist gives to his torso, the roundness of the fleshy portions of arm and leg, swelled out by the muscular masses underneath, are points which he did not learn of his mediocre colleague of Syria. Some of his works are far above many a Phcenician piece, and that of a later date. These characteristics hold with the costume ; the women's dress consists of a skirt trimmed with four or more bands, and is never met with in the Nile valley or in Syria. Its deceptive resemblance to the kaiinakes of the Chaldaeans and Persians has already been adverted to. The men wear drawers. F'inally, the idol series excites our surprise by the evident effort made henceforward towards anthropomorphism. If painting and in- taglios show us daemons with animals heads, we find nothing of the sort in statuettes, whether of marble or bronze, which no doubt represent the dii majores. Animals and fabulous monsters, which Egypt never ceased to worship, are already relegated here to the background. So, too, the most shapeless of the figurines betray the inner craving which will prompt the Hellenes of the following period to idealize the forms of man and woman, that they may find in these noble and pure images the means of translating the idea and the various aspects with which they pictured to themselves the mysterious essence of the Deity. Next, perhaps, in date to the marble and clay idols are the stelae of the royal cemetery at Mycenae. If, broadly speak- ing, the theme depicted on them is similar to that of many an Egyptian and Assyrian bas-relief, it is yet of a nature likely to come to the mind of any artist entrusted with the task of glorifying the prince. The composition and the work itself, how- ever, are diametrically opposed to the vast and far more compli- cated pictures, where Oriental art has handled the same subject. Here the number of the actors who appear in the scene is reduced to a strict minimum. Personages and animals are drawn with strange carelessness, and merely outlined, all inner details being eliminated. The groups are enclosed by those spirals and cable ornaments which characterize Mycenian art. The author of these bas-reliefs had no good models before his eyes ; and he tried his best to convey, with the few resources he could command, a high notion of the warlike prowess and power of the king. His sincerity is only equalled by his clumsiness.