Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/503

 44^ Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. classes. Some are dependent on metal technique, and consist of curvilinear figures variously combined (Figs. 112, 356. 531)- Others are derived from the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and repeat those lower animals for which the ceramic painter showed so marked a predilection. The rosette stands midway between these two forms (Fig. 281). The second class is re- presented by leaves with radiating markings (Fig. 532), by cuttle-fish (Fig. 533). and butterflies (Fig. 534). All the plates have been stamped in a mould ; from it cannot be obtained the freedom and fanciful play of the brush. Accordingly, the rendering of the leaves and animals is much more conventional than the corresponding figures on the vases. It is the same Kic. 538. — Gold plaque. Two-thirds. Hycena;. with the plates whereon are represented animals in profile (Figs. 397, 404, 406, 412). Thus, Grave III. yielded no less than twenty-nine, and Grave IV. fifty-three replicas of the octopus,' whose feelers are arranged with geometrical precision. The same remarks apply to the plates decorated with butterflies (Fig. 535). The linear ornament seen on most of these gold plaques returns on smaller and slightly-con vexed discs, the relics, it would appear, of the decoration once beheld on sword-sheaths.' The same style of ornament re-appears on the buttons whose strange shape caused archaeologists to mistake their true purport and origin (Fig. 536), fortuitous resemblances having been exaggerated into real analogies with this or that Celtic or Merovingian type of gold- work. The buttons consist of a gold-leaf stuck on a wood or bone core, upon which the design had been previously traced ' ScHLiEMANN, Mycma.