Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/381

 328 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. Mycenians by the masks they had seen on the Egyptian mum- mies, the difference of execution from one country to the other is so great as to strike the most superficial observer. There is a wide chasm between the noble and conventional style of the mummy masks, and the coarse realism of the Mycenai ex- amples. Moreover, we fail to perceive any affiliation between the animals which the Mycenian artist represented and those that were probably brought to him on imported wares. PVom these he no doubt borrowed certain fictitious types, such as griffins and sphinxes ; but when he had to reproduce living and organic forms, he took counsel of his personal impressions. We shall not insist on those rude clay jars and figures in the semblance of dogs, cows, and pigs, which reach us from the Troad and Argolis (Fig. 383-387) ; nor those seen on gold leaves where the animal form, barely outlined and rigorously symmetrical, has but a decorative value (Figs. 397, 404). In turning out by the dozen those mock offerings and personal ornaments, the crafts- man contented himself with rapidly sketching such images as he could best remember. Was the case different with the lions of the famous gateway, the bulls of the gold goblets, or the best- executed intaglios ? Did he seek his models from foreign parts, Egypt for example, for those works on which he lavished his best care ? The answer to this query must again be sought from the Vaphio vases, since nowhere has the artist been in such earnest as there. Now the style of the Vaphio bulls is neither Chaldaeo- Assyrian nor Phoenician, so that we have no reason what- ever for approximating it with the inexpressibly rude productions of Syro-Cappadocian art. The sculptures and paintings of Egypt show us a much more simplified animal form. The contour is reduced to such strokes as characterize the species, and the chisel and brush are sparingly used within the contour ; being confined to those indications the elimination of which would make it difficult to understand the anatomical frame-work of the figure. This looks as if standing at a great distance. In the plastic art the taste of the artist led him to act as distance does in the outside world ; namely to eliminate all superfluous detail, by which the eye might be amused but not helped in defining the unit. He thus epitomized and sim- plified nature. Here the case is quite different ; the form seems to have been looked at at closer quarters, near enough for every