Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/102

 84 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.ka. enable us to point out the criteria by which genuine, as against spurious, figures may be recognized. The former are undoubtedly rigid and harsh throughout ; they sin against the canons of good taste, and violate the laws which govern art production, whether in the lack of all proportion or probability exhibited in their multi- tudinous goggle-eyes, huge, uplifted hands, or want of breadth and dryness of outlines, recalling German penny toys rather than human figures. Nevertheless, these are defects inherent to most primitive arts met with too in Phoenicia and Asia Minor, 1 where we had occasion, in another part of our work, to single out their chief characteristics. Allowance being made for slight differences, it may be broadly stated that Sardinian art objects are appreciably the same as those of other barbarous peoples, ancient and modern. In spurious bronzes, on the other hand, the whimsicality and oddness characteristic of genuine pieces, are laboured and inten- tional ; strange appendages figure about the head, such as deer antlers (Fig. 3), horns circling and radiating round the face (Fig. 89), snakes wreathing the cap or playing about the hands and limbs ; clubs, pitchforks, and such-like meaningless accessories to widen the chests, or decorate the loins of the grinning and would- be human creatures. Every line, every stroke, being emphasized in vain attempt after effect, resulting in dire caricature. We may seem to have laid too much stress upon base imitations, but for the fact that public and private collections contain even now a certain number of false Sardinian bronzes. Hence the need for pointing out the characteristics by which these fraudulent pieces may be distinguished ; had we not done so, discredit might have re- dounded upon a whole series of monuments, which, albeit they can lay no claims to be considered as art efforts, are nevertheless valuable as documentary evidence for the historian. § 5. — Weapons, Metal Woi'k. Having given as brief an account of Sardinian bronzes as was compatible with lucidity ; having noted the circumstances under which they were unearthed, together with the history the small figures seem to tell, interesting from the fact that they are faithful 1 We did not reproduce the dagger alluded to in the text (Fig. 308), because its peculiarities and the position it occupies on the warrior's breast, incline us to rank it among Sardinian productions.