Page:Woman in Art.djvu/73

WOMAN IN ART Angelo's sculptural paintings; let us go back to the site of Pompeii; beautiful and profligate when buried alive, her now uncovered ruins give an inkling of a broken and vanished Greek art in decoration.

Pompeiian red and green we know to have been the favorite tones for the walls of palaces and villas in that splendid summer resort of imperial and wealthy Romans. In spite of the lapse of time, of earthquake and boiling lava, Pompeii and Herculaneum have been found by excavators to house much of Greek art and ideas. Doubtless the method of mural painting came to Italy with the Greek captives, and their methods and arts have proved to be worth while, considering their survival of time. It is true that those walls, like much of Egyptian art, are with us today because almost hermetically buried from air and dampness, but as a vehicle for color have a staying quality, as is proved by paintings on fragmentary walls on the Palatine. Much of the color on Egyptian walls was of glazed tiles.

We set foot within the ruins of the house of Germanicus to study its murals so wonderfully preserved, and in the atrium we are reminded of the words of St. Paul to his audience on Mars Hill: "I see that you are very religious"; for the first and largest room is supplied with an altar inscribed to their domestic gods. But in the triclinium or dining room we face the art of more than nineteen hundred years with subjects to be found in modern art, game, such as deer, ducks, birds, et cetera, paneled with borders of delicate arabesques of vines and flower motifs, as also are the group paintings in the tablinium, groups representing classic lore, Mercury and Io, Galatea and Polyphemus, and even a street scene in Rome at that period. The frescoes are Greek, the color wonderfully clear and strong, the figures impressive of Greek drawing. On these, as on some Pompeiian walls, the motif is a dancing girl or nymph wreathing herself with flowers, or a cupid with bow and quiver, all in the flat surface, yet not wholly devoid of perspective.

Whether we read, study or travel, the best we can do is to gather and glean from the abundant harvest of past arts, not only because knowledge is power, but because gleaning puts us in touch with humanity's aims and progress, teaching and serving as a comparative scale.

In Italy we glean more for our subject.

First, look at a fundamental fact concerning the birth of genius. In the wonderful fifteenth century, within a radius of little more than two hundred miles, fifty-six of our well-known artists were born; four others were born in 53