Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/374

 Characteristics of Mycenian Sculpture. 321 The same may be said of the piece representing a siege (Fig. 358). Here the work is by a silversmith, and the art. in consequence of it, is much more advanced. The fragmentary scene in question has been compared, but we think erroneously, to the apparently similar pictures displayed on the walls of pylons, whether in the tombs or palaces of Egypt and Assyria ; but the resemblance goes no farther than the choice of subject. Remem- bering that Achaean, Perseidae, and Atridae dynasts, though their activity was exercised on a smaller scale, must have been warriors as doughty as the conquerors of Thebes and Nineveh, we cannot be surprised at the bellicose themes we find at Mycenae. For the rest, there is nothing either in the aspect of the fabrication or the grouping of the designs to remind us of the Nile valley or of Assyria.^ Here all is more incorrect, less symmetrical and conventional than in the assaults figured on Asiatic bas-reliefs. The movements are expressed in a lively but totally different manner. The sculptor sought his models in one or other of those conflicts which, either as a witness or actor in the scene, had stirred his soul within. Perhaps also the lays of the distant predecessors of Homer and Hesiod may have furnished this or that detail to his picture. The complicated and clever technique, the fairly correct design of the figures represented on the encrusted daggers and on the Vaphio vases, caused even greater surprise. Hesitation was felt and doubt expressed in some quarters to the effect that the authors of the stelae and the rude clay figures could not be the same artificers who had turned out works which bear witness to skill of no mean order. These misgivings I shared as far as the daggers are concerned ; ^ but my doubts vanished in proportion as my acquaintance with the productions of Mycenian civilization increased. The native goldsmith, in all probability, learnt these fine and delicate processes which he applied to the decoration of his daggers, from craftsmen trained in the Egyptian school, for it is clear that more than one subject must have been borrowed from the Delta. The Mycenian griffin, with his three or four curled plumes falling behind his head, comes straight from the Nile valley ; whilst the stretch of body of running animals is also in the habits of the Egyptian 1 History of Art, ^ Bulletin de correspondance hellenique. VOL. 11.