Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/383

 330 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. that people the wood, no two have the same pose. On the contrary, look at hundreds of pictures in the Egyptian necropoles, wherein the bovine species is portrayed, and you will scarcely find more than three or four different attitudes given to the animals. They are either being driven along in droves, or drawing the plough, or couchant, or being milked. The sculptor never seems to have stepped outside this narrow circle. The same poverty of invention is manifest on the Phoenician tazze, where no change is rung from first to last. The ox is either feeding or attacked by a lion, and the cow invariably suckles her calf. The only subject which stands out from these unending repetitions, is a patera from Curium (Cyprus), on which are figured two bulls in no very impressive manner.^ By themselves our vases already offer, as far as the bulls are concerned, a richer repertory of forms and characteristic movements than all the Oriental art put together. The superiority of the Mycenian artist will stand out far more clearly if we throw in the Tirynthian fresco, and above all the engraved gems, where this same type appears so often and in such varying forms (Figs. 419, 7, 8, 18, 24; 421, 4, 24; 424, II ; PI. XIII.). Though the interpretation of man's body on our vases and other monuments of this art is far below the portrayal of the animal, it is no less individual. The form of the three personages introduced by the craftsman into the twin pictures has undergone notable changes. The drawing of the head is correct enough, and not deficient in vigour ; but the torso is unnaturally thin and slender, and the curving in above the hips much too ex- aggerated. We find nothing of the sort in Egypt, where a just proportion is observed between the breadth of the chest, the fulness of the abdomen, and the roundness of the limbs. These are attached to the bust with scarcely any transition or salience about the hips. Frank nudity is rarely represented in Chaldaea or Assyria ; but when we exceptionally meet with it, we always find that the various parts of the unit are well poised. The portrayal of the nude figures on Phoenician cups is clearly reminiscent of the general lines of Egyptian figures ; whereas we have, so to speak, no example in Mycenian art where the ex- aggerated curving in of the torso does not occur. This curious deformation returns in the scene where the hunter chases a bull, 1 History of Art