Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/382

 Characteristics of Mycenian Sculpture. 329 shade of the outlines to have been made out. This is why the form is fuller than that beheld in the plastic works of the Delta ; at the same time, the muscles, bones, and articulations, the wrinkles and wisps of hair are less harshly expressed, less rigid than in the Chaldaeo-Assyrian bas-reliefs. The forms may be said to stand mid-way between the two modes of realistic interpreta- tions which characterize the sculptors of the Euphrates valley and those of the Delta. It belongs to neither of them ; nor is it a compromise between the two, one of those eclectic combinations which the Phoenician artisan knew how to turn to his profit. The style is distinct and original. I cannot understand how anybody could look towards Syria for the author of the Vaphio vases. In that case we should have to suppose that an art existed there in remote times whose works had all perished except the goblets in question. The contrast between our vases and Syrian pro- ductions must be patent to all. The Phoenician specimens, which, owing to the material and destination, would best lend them- selves to be compared, are those bronze and silver gilt bowls which that art has handed down to us in considerable numbers. The themes it treats offer many points of resemblance to those which served to decorate our goblets. Yet how different the taste and spirit which they disclose! The scenes figured on the Phoenician bowls have somewhat the air of having been traced on a pattern ; we divine the ** blocks," to use a modern expression, which the workman had borrowed from models of many lands and distributed liberally, in those concentric bands surrounding a central design.^ His tool was agile and sure, but his work was second-hand ; he hurried on to secure his fee, and had no time to inspire himself with the direct spectacle of Nature. Here it is quite another matter. Despite faulty design, of which the Phoenician craftsman is free, we feel ourselves in pre- sence of the work of an artist who was an eye-witness of the scene which he represents, or who pictured it vividly to himself from what he knew of the habits and gait of the bull. Although inexperienced in many respects, he had observed Nature with intelligent curiosity, and the infinite variety which he perceived there had so far impressed him, that he was at pains to reproduce its ever-changing and diverse aspects. Out of the seven bulls ^ History of Art