Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/392

 Characteristics of Mycenian Sculpture. 339 is the exaggerated narrowing of the bust above the hips. Never- theless, this very mistake shows that although his eye had seen more than there was in reality, he had observed Nature with intelhgent curiosity. Like all beginners, he achieved his greatest success when he copied animals, but he was less fortunate in his presentation " of man. Some of his bulls and lions, notably those which he gathered together, as it were, so as to insert them in the narrow space of a seal, hold their own against all comers. He had rather a fine intuition of the whole than a precise knowledge of detail. His portrayal of animal and human figures, despite blemishes of drawing, strike us particularly because of the dash and warmth, the sincere feeling, which he has put there. Our sculptor stands out from among all his colleagues for his taste, we might almost say his passion, for movement and variety. The bolder and franker the movement, the more unforeseen it is, the more the artist, without measuring the difficulties of the emprise, seems actually to delight and revel in attempting it. In this respect then, despite inexperience, he is the distant precursor of the great sculptors of the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. We shall have to descend very low in the series of monuments of archaic art ere we alight on specimens comparable to the best works of Mycenian sculpture, or where the free action of the body in activity is reflected and portrayed with better effect.