Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/852

ARCHÆOLOGY. we come more closely into contact than with the earlier art in this kind through the wall decora- tions of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Rome, which follow the traditions of tiiis epoch. Apelles (q.v.) of Colophon represents the highest devel- opment of Greek painting. His idealized por- traits of Alexander were as famous as Lysippus's statues. Protogenes of Caunus, who worked at Rhodes about the end of the Fourth Century, is also distinguislied in this department. Anti- philus at the court of Ptolemy is characterized as "most eminent in facility." But the list of great Greek painters closes with Theon of Samos, of the Third Century (cf. the article "Malerei," in Baumeister, op. cit.).

In other species of art we find the eminent gem-engraver Pyrgoteles, employed by Alexan- der; and this branch of the sculptor's profession, ever excessively popular among the ancients, was fostered by that monarch's successors.

In vase-painting we note little else than de- cline, the latest development manifesting itself in Magna Grsecia, Etruria, and Campania. The painted vases of southern Italy, which present a distinctly fimereal element side by side with a marked influence from the drama, give us nuich valuable arch.Tological material. Asteas (of Psstum? ), Pytho, and Lasimus are its only mas- ters known to us by signature. We have also some Campanian vases with Latin inscriptions of the Third Century. The end of vase-painting seems to fall about the beginning of the Second Century B.C.

We may here depart from our chronological order to consider briefly the peculiar ware of Etruria ( q.v. ), when, side by side with primi- tive geometric pottery, continued seemingly over a long period, and more or less skillful imitations of Greek painted ware (particularly Attic), we find the so-called i-asi di hucchero, a peculiar class of pottery of black clay, about which we have but little exact knowledge and of which examples have been found not merely in Etruria, but also in the Orient, in Cj'prus, in Greece proper, and on the coasts of the Black Sea. The earliest of such vessels in Etruria are made without the potter's wheel, but in the manufacture of the later (and darker) ware, this tool was employed. The earliest figures are scratched in; subse- quently relief-decoration appears. In the latter ease, Greek types are employed, at first roughly, afterwards more skillfully and with a mold or incised roller. In individual cases polychrome painting occurs. This art seems to have con- tinued into the Sixth Century.

Before leaving the subject of pottery we must also notice the so-called Samian and Megarian relief-ware, assigned to the Third and Second centuries B.C., and the Aretine ware, apparently of the First Century B.C. and later.

In numismatics the new development under Alexander and his successors, designated as "the period of later fine art from the accession of Alexander to the death of Lysimachus" (B.C. 336-280), and marked by the influence of Ly- sippus, is succeeded by a period of decline in art extending to the Roman conquest (b.c. 280-146). Types of sovereigns, first that of the deified Alex- ander, then those of other and living princes, make their appearance upon coins, and continue down to the later Roman Empire a valuable series of historical portraits. (Jold coinage now begins to occupy a prominent position, and continues side by side with silver and bronze to be a niediimi of exchange under the Roman Empire. In small art our attention is particularly drawn to the terra-cotta figurines of this period, particularly those of Tanagra in Boeotia, which in their charming shapes and lovely coloring give us so many delightful pictures of Greek life. Such figures have their origin in very early times, but from the time of Praxiteles, whose style they often reproduce, down to the Roman period and later, they formed a favorite household decoration, and were buried in great numbers with the dead. See Terr.4-Cott.. Bronze mirrors may also be alluded to here before we pass out of the domain of Greek classic art. Of these some most beautiful specimens exist, their lids forming a class of (•hefs-d'osacre in metal-graving, while their handles are often statuettes of finest workmanship.

VI. Roman Period. The passion of the Ro- man connoisseurs for objects of Greek art has already been alluded to; but in the period upon which we are now entering certain other ele- ments demand our attention. As among the Greeks, the introduction of foreign art was met by a native element, which at first colored and afterwards completely ovcrjiowered by the strength and vigor of its own development exter- nal influences; so we find in Italy, among the Etruscans, the masters, in so much, of the Romans, and whose peculiar bucchero-ware has already been mentioned, a native element which reacted upon the art from without, though in a much sligliter degree than that of Greece and with inferior genius. Their art was not the oldest in Italy; for we find specimens of situlm (pails) of beaten metal, perhaps to be designated as Umbrian, the decoration of which, while it seems to show certain elements derived through the Greeks, has but little affinity with Etruscan art.

The influences at work among the Etruscans were principally Greek, as we have noticed in the case of their figured pottery. The native ele- ments were chiefly their sombre religion, and a marked aptitude for portraiture. We lind "real- ism combined with poverty of style." The chief Etruscan monuments are funereal, consisting of decorated tombs, sarcophagi, and ash-ums, in which Greek ornamentation and Etruscan por- traiture are not very happily blended. The same tendency to portraiture appears among the Romans, fostered b_y the importance attached to ancestral imagines (portraits in wax), which played so marked a part in their funeral ceremonies. Their masters in this were Etruscan artists.

Hand in hand with the art of plastic por- traiture, in which Roman artists learned from Etruscan masters, went that of honorary statu- ary in bronze, and after the Second Punic War such statues were to be seen at Rome in large nimibers, most Romans of any distinction being honored in this way. It was just after this time that their Grecian conquests began to bring the Romans decidedly under the sway of Hellenic art.

In architecture the markedly Roman feature is the great employment of the arch, which, although not unknown to the Greeks, was but rarely used by them. This rendered possible such great works as the aqueducts, to say nothing of the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the other huge structures of imperial times. In tem-