Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/397

 344 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. of long horns, curved in front, and reaching as far as the frame of the picture. A man balances himself on his back, just touching the animal with his right knee and the tip of his toe, whilst he throws the other high up into the air, and holds on to the bull's horn with his right hand ; the other is laid in front of his body. When the find was first brought out of the ruins, the man was explained to be an acrobat who shows off his agility by leaping on to the back of the animal in full career. A passage in Homer was cited in reference to it. where a clever rider is described who leads four horses at full speed, and vaults now on the back of one, now on that of another, without ever falling to the ground.^ Others have compared our group with the en- graving seen on a Greek coin from Catania, in Sicily, and have proposed to see in the Tirynthian bull a river-god, accompanied, as on the coins, by a genii of the Satyr or Silenus family. The discovery of the Vaphio vases has given us the right, and at the same time a much simpler explanation. The bull figured on the fresco has been recognized as the animal in a semi-wild state which bold sportsmen loved to capture ; whilst the tight- fitting drawers secured by a girdle, and the horizontal bands covering the legs of the ** acrobat" have been identified with those of the hunter who brings him down at Vaphio. Hence the inference that the theme was treated about the same time by the goldsmith, the painter, and the engraver, who made it quite the fashion (Figs. 419, 24; 425, 12). We now find no difficulty in grasping the real character and the movement which the painter has given to the hunter. The Mycenian artist frequently betrays his embarrassment how to show two figures at once in one plane, which in reality would cover each other. In such cases he does not hesitate to superimpose vertically, bodies which in his model are horizontally juxtaposed.^ But in the mind of the contemporary spectator, the hunter is running in front of the bull. Confirmed habit predisposed him to accept without demur this childish convention. Besides mural paintings, which served to cover the walls of the apartments with a brilliant and historic veil, there were also what we should call easel or movable pictures. In a room of the house at Mycenae near which was found the fresco with ^ Hiad' ^ F. Marx, Der Stier von Tiryns.