Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/254

* GREEK ART. 220 GREEK ART. have treated it with a wonderful command of technique. The Ko.m. Peeiod (b.c. 136-a.d. 330). This period may be brielly dismissed, as it is not in general au aye of artistic originality, except in the works of Roman architecture and the marvel- ous accuracy of Roman portraiture. Greek art was known to the Romans through the wholesale plundering of the Eastern world for the decora- tion of Roman temples, palaces, and villas. It is tlie ago of copies, when many of the works which fiTl our museums were executed — some of them by ilirect transference of the original through the aid of accurate measurements, as is shown l)y the puiictilli still existing on many statues which were left by the sculptor to aid him in his work. Many more are free imita- tions and reproductions, such as mark the works of the school 'of Pasiteles, who sought his models in the early fifth century, and whose pupil Stejihanus produced a nude youth which is ob- viously inspired by the Argive School associated with the name of Ageladas, and which became so popular that we find it combined with other fig- ures, as in the group of Orestes and Electra at Naples. Another example is the Venus Genetrix of Arcesilaus, which is almost certainly a repro- duction of the "Aphrodite in the Gardens" of Alcamenes. So, too, the Venus de Medici is a probably debased and sensualized version of the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles. Bi[!Lioc;n.ruY and Soitkces. The sources of our knowledge of Greek art are twofold — the extant remains and the literary tradition. The monuments are, of course, the basis of all dis- cussion of questions of style and technique : but their value is limited in the field of architecture by the ruined condition to which most ancient buildings have been reduced ; while in sculpture the vast majority of the statues which fill the museums are copies of a later age. from which the style of the great masters must be extracted by careful and extensive comparisons, in which the influence of subjective criticism must neces- sarily be prominent. For the history of Greek art it is necessary to turn to the docimientary evidence as preserved in inscriptions, which in- clude the signatures of artists and the records of the erection of notable buildings, or in the writings of the ancients ; and as these are in general late compilations, it follows that precision is sadly lacking on many points, and that our knowledge of the individual artists rests more often on skillful combinations than on positive evidence. One reason for this is the attitude of the Greeks themselves toward artists during the f5fth and fourth centuries B.C. In general, while the work was highly valued, the artist was an object of little interest. This was due to the low esteem in which the artisan was held, as one whose confining labor hindered him from serving the State or cultivating his body or mind. Consequently, when in the third century B.C. in- terest in the personality of the great artists of the past arose, information was not always at- tainable. The earliest treatises on art are naturally technical rather than historical. The Argive sculptor Polyclitus in his Canon discussed the correct proportions of the himi.an form, and Ictinus. the architect of the Parthenon, wrote a technical description of his masterpiece. Not until the early part of the third century does a history of the earlier art appear. Xenocratea, an artist of the Sicj'onian School, seems to have prepared a critical study of the great sculptors from the time of Phidias, in which he aimed to show that perfection had been reached only with Lj'sippus of Sicyon. A chronological ar- rangement was probably no part of his scheme, and it is not certain that he gave any account of the predecessors of Phidias, whom he chose to regard as the real founder of plastic art. At Pergamus the history of Greek art and the chronology and characteristics of the artists w-ere worked out by such writers as Antigonus of Carystus afld Polemon, often from very uncer- tain evidence, and with not a little freedom of ' combination. The writings of these men have perished, but their views have been preserved in the Natural Llistory of Pliny the Elder and the Description of Greece by the traveler Pausanias, as well as by later lexicographers and scholiasts. The testimony of the classical writers to the history of art has been collected by J. Overbeck, AntiliC Schriftijuellen zur Geschichtc der bildcn- den Kilnstc hri den Griechen (Leipzig, 180S), and by H. Stuart Jones, Select Passages from Ancient Writers Illustrative of the History of Greek Sculpture (London. 1895), containing also an English translation and commentarj-. There is an extensive literature dealing with the histor- ical studies of the ancients and the sources of the extant writers, which is convenienth' sum- marized in Jex-Blake and Sellars. The Elder FUni/'s Chapters on the History of Art (Lon- don, 1800). This book contains the text of Pliny, with translation and eommentar}', an in- troduction discussing the sources, and a good bibliography. The signatures of the Greek artists were collected by Loewy, [nschriften gricchischer Bildhauer (Leipzig. 1885) : but this work needs supplementing, as many more are now known. For architecture, the only surviving literary source is the work of Vitiiivius (q.v. ). a practical architect of the time of Augustus, who drew from lost Greek writers, whom he sometimes mis- understood and mistranslated. Although the importance of both monumental and literary evidence has always been recognized, it is onh' in recent years that systematic endeav- ors have been made to correlate these sources, and. by a comparison of extant works with the descriptions of the literature, to determine with approximate certainty the characteristics of the various schools, and. within certain limits, the artists of the originals from which our copies w"ere made. The modern histories begin with the epoch-making work of Winckelmann (q.v.), in which the periods of rise and decline in Greek art were first clearly defined. This and otiier works published before the middle of the nine- teenth century have now chiefly an historical im- portance, as the discoveries of recent years have vastly increased the material and revolutionized many of the earlier views. For the lives of the artists the fundamental work is still Brunn's Geschichte der griechischen Kiinstler (Brunswick: second edition, Stuttgart. 18S!)). The best brief work is Tarbell's History of Greek Art (New York, 1897). A standard work of the old school is Overbeck's Gcfichiehte der griechischen Plasfik (4th edition. Leipzig, 1803-94). which suffers chiefly from the separa- tion of the monuments and literature. Probably the best historj' at present is Collignon's Histoire