were not so friendly. The great celebrity of this painter rested upon a
peculiarity directly contrary to that of Protogenes, designated by
Quintilian as facility; that is, a freshness and genial security of
conception and treatment in everything which his brush touched. His
range of subjects exceeded that of Protogenes, or even of Apelles; for
he painted with equal excellence pictures of the deities, mythological
scenes, portraits, genre pieces, such as the Wool-comber and the Boy
Blowing the Fire; and even caricatures, such as that of Gryllos, with a
face reminding one of the significance of his own name--the Porker;
whence it comes that all caricatures were, in antiquity, called Grylli.
That he was fond of startling effects of light is evident from the Boy
Blowing the Fire, the glow of which was reflected upon his face; also
from his renowned satyr Aposcopeuon--the Gazer--whose glance the
shielding hand seemed at once to intensify and to conceal.
Aetion, according to Brunn, also belongs to the group of artists
contemporary with Apelles. His importance can be measured only by the
esteem of antiquity, and by the minute descriptions of one of his
pictures. This represented the marriage of Alexander and Roxana; the
latter, sitting modestly upon a couch, is served by Cupids, who take the
veil from her head and loosen her sandals. The king, accompanied by
Hephaistion as attendant, with torches, is led towards the bride by an
Eros; two more, panting under the weight of the shaft, bear the lance of
the conqueror, while others carry by the handles a shield; and one
Cupid, who has crept into a coat of mail, seems, from his hiding-place,
to lie in wait for those about to pass. It is not strange that this
composition, so charming in the description of Lucian, should have led
modern painters to attempt to reproduce it; as in the frescos of Raphael
in the Borghese Gallery, and those of Razzi in the Farnesina.
Among other masters of the time of Alexander were the Athenian
Asclepiodoros, of whom we know little more than that Apelles gave him
the preference in composition; and Theon of Samos, whose works
degenerated into an attempt to secure a theatrical rather than a natural
effect. Besides tragic scenes, like the murder of his mother by Orestes,
and the blinding of the singer Thamyris, this is shown in the heavily
armed warrior called by Quintilian his masterpiece--a man in the
violence of attack with a drawn sword. To increase the theatrical
effect, this picture was exhibited by the artist accompanied with the
flourish of trumpets. If we here bear in mind the so-called Borghese
warrior of Agasias--that sculptural cousin of the Hoplite--we cannot
mistake the spirit of a time which, after the inner significance had
perished, clung entirely to the external, and, renouncing truthfulness
in composition, which here would have demanded a group, was satisfied
with a theatrical sham. The farthest remove from the conceptions of
Polygnotos had now been reached.
Hellenism, by which is meant the civilization of the period after
Alexander, when the Grecian kingdom had become cosmopolitan, satisfied
its artistic requirements by a repetition of what the previous centuries
had produced. The attempt was made, in sculpture and in painting, to
combine results already won, generally in a shallow eclecticism. Of the
numerous painters in that decorative period few names have been handed
down. The most was accomplished by the masters of Sikyon where the
tradition of the energetic school of Pamphilos was not yet lost.
Protogenes in Rhodes, and Antiphilos in Egypt, also had some followers
who were not quite without fame. Timomachos of Byzantion, at least, was
equal to his great predecessors of the time of Alexander. His Medea was
purchased by Cæsar for eighty talents, and his other works are not less
praised; among them one, perhaps historical, showing two men in
conversation, and the Gorgo, may be connected with an event related by
Herodotos (v. 51). If, as we are told, there was a Medea represented
before the murder of her children, in a struggle between hatred of her
husband and motherly love--a subject treated in a Pompeian wall-painting
in the museum at Naples; an Ajax, after his fury, meditating suicide;
and an Iphigeneia in Tauris, perhaps recognizing her brother, we may
conclude that Timomachos had returned to the pathetic element, and that
he united with it, so far as possible, the technical perfection of the
Alexandrian period. It is possible that the painter stood in the same
artistic relation to the sculptors Pasiteles, Stephanos, and Menelaos
as did Theon to Agasias.
After Parrhasios, side by side with the grander style had developed a
species of cabinet-painting which seems to have been devoted especially
to obscene subjects (Pornographia). Already in the time of Alexander,
pictures of a small size were much in favor; besides the Egyptian
Antiphilos already mentioned as celebrated in this direction, Callicles
and Calates worked in it exclusively, and Peiræicos had great fame as a
painter of this kind. His subjects were not of a lewd nature, but were
taken from the lower ranks of life, such as booths of barbers and
cobblers, donkeys, eatables, etc.; by which one is reminded of the genre
pieces and still-life paintings of the Netherlands. Pornographia was
thus changed to Rhopographia, painting of small wares. In later times
the term employed for obscene painting seems to have been
Rhyparographia.
This trivial painting naturally continued to be prevalent in the periods
of the Diadochi and the Romans, since art, when reduced to mere
decoration, cultivated by preference graceful and lively subjects. It
was extended even to the floors, for which mosaic had been used as early
as the time of the royal court of Pergamon. If the decoration of walls
is based upon tapestry, as Semper has made evident, this is especially
the case with colored floors. The effect of mosaic, in which form
painting now took possession of the pavement, differed little from that
of weaving and embroidery. Sosos was considered as the oldest and most
celebrated master of this process, perhaps because he first carried it
beyond simple patterns. He represented, in the so-called “unswept hall”
at Pergamon, remnants of food, fruit-rinds, etc., as if scattered upon
the floor; also a dove drinking from a shell. The celebrity of these
works makes it natural that several repetitions of the dove should have
been found. It seems, however, that the practice of this art was not in
extensive use before the time of the Roman empire, when it spread over
all the floors, as painting did over all the walls. The mosaics in the
Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which are composed of rough pebbles, may,
however, be even more ancient than the works of Sosos in Pergamon.
[Illustration: Fig. 246.--The Campana Tomb at Veii.]
ETRURIA.
At the time when Hellenic influence had developed to its fullest extent
in Magna Græcia, the Etruscans had long passed their highest point of
perfection. Roman tradition gives no little significance to their
civilization, in its artistic as well as in its political aspects,
though it was far less grand and brilliant than that of their neighbors
in the south of the Italian peninsula. But as Rome rose, Etruria fell;
and in the time of the Peloponnesian war it had but a shadow of its
former dominant position in Italy.
Whether this people were related to the ancient Greeks, or merely mixed
with the Pelasgic and Hellenic element through emigration from the
western coasts of Greece, it is certain that the older culture of the
nation shows a great resemblance to that of the countries beyond the
Adriatic. This may have been owing partly to common Oriental prototypes,
and to native imitation of these, and partly to the fact that certain
primitive results of civilization, under like material premises,
naturally assume a more or less similar form without any real historical
connection.
The method of building the Etruscan walls is particularly a case in
point. The resemblance of these to the most ancient fortifications of
Greece makes possible, though it does not establish, an intimate
communication between the two races, to which also the use of Greek
letters for the strange Etruscan language certainly points. The
so-called Cyclopean jointing, however, presents itself in every
civilized land where rock is found which naturally breaks in polygonal
forms. So also square-stone masonry early appears wherever the material,
quarried without difficulty in rectangular forms, favors this more
satisfactory method. Besides both these varieties, the Etruscans made
use of bricks, as shown by the foundations of the walls of Veii, which
above-ground are mainly built of cut stone. These are at least as
ancient as the time of the later kings.
[Illustration: Fig. 247.--Gate of Falerii.]
[Illustration: Fig. 248.--Canal of the Marta.]
Some of the remaining ruins of Etruria, and of Central Italy--for the
peculiar civilization of that region is not strictly confined to the
limits of the Etruscan language--show in the building of gates a new
technical element. It has been seen how the Greeks in vain sought a
substitute for the arch, to them an inadmissible, if not an
unattainable, feature; and exhausted every conceivable method of
horizontal stone-laying in order to cover their gateways. Similar
evasive attempts are not wanting in Etruria; the Cyclopean walls,
especially, present portal constructions similar to those of Mykenæ. But
through the perfection of stone-cutting, and building with rectangular
blocks, the ceiling of the passage by means of the arch was early
attained. That this step was taken before the invasion of the Gauls is
shown by the still remaining Gate of Falerii (_Fig._ 247), which city,
as is well known, lost its importance under Camillus. It is not certain
whence the people of Central Italy attained their knowledge of the arch.
Though it had been familiar to the Assyrians as early as the ninth
century B.C., it is possible that they made this important discovery
independently, perhaps somewhat later than the Mesopotamians. The vault
of the Cloaca Maxima in Rome dates from the sixth century B.C., but it
shows, even at this early period, a perfection which gives evidence of
long previous use. Canal-building was one of the first conditions of
existence on the western coast of Central Italy, where the drainage of
the swamps--the neglect of which, since the Middle Ages, has reduced the
once populous Maremma to a pestilential desert--the discharge of the
mountain lakes, which otherwise overflow from time to time, desolating
the lower country, and the regulation of the river-courses, alone made
possible the settlement of a people and the founding of flourishing
cities west of the Apennines. It is therefore not improbable that the
great canal discovered by Dennis, which once drained the swampy Valley
of the Marta, preceded the Cloaca Maxima, and, indeed, antedated the
Roman period altogether. (_Fig._ 248.) The enormous stones employed in
its construction, and its great extent, display, even in this primitive
age, that marked inclination for works of general usefulness which
distinguished the people of Italy above all others of antiquity.
Of the long-forgotten cities, discovered in the present century by their
walls, little else remains than extensive cemeteries, which, as
repeatedly happens among the ruined places of the earth, have outlasted
by more than two thousand years the dwellings of the living. The streets
and buildings of these settlements, already in ruins under the Romans,
have disappeared almost without a trace; while the monuments of the dead
are so well preserved as frequently to give information concerning even
the domestic architecture of their builders. By far the greater number
of the tombs were tumuli, conical hills of earth, which generally, as in
Lydia, were elevated upon a low cylinder and reveted by an outer course
of stone. These have now almost all been reduced to the appearance of
natural mounds. Their dimensions in some instances are almost as great
as those of the smaller Egyptian pyramids. The base of the monument at
Poggio Gajella, near Chiusi, formerly falsely held to be the tomb of
Porsena, measures 256 m. in its circumference, while that at Monteroni,
between Rome and Civita Vecchia, is 195 m. These gigantic foundations at
times bore several cones. This appears to have been the case with the
so-called tomb of Cucumella at Vulci, where two tall tower-like
elevations still remain, which doubtless served as substructures for the
terminating piers. The cippus may be imagined to have been analogous to
the upper members of the tombs in Lydia, or, perhaps, to have resembled
a pear-shaped capital, like the fragment found near the ruins of the
so-called tomb of Pythagoras, or the imitations upon terra-cotta
reliefs--similar to the cone which so generally terminated Roman tholos
roofs. When several cones were placed upon one base, the angle of
elevation was made steeper, as may probably have been the case with the
tomb of Porsena at Clusium, the description of which is given by Pliny
(xxxvi. 3) after Varro. If the tombs called those of the Horatii and
Curiatii at Albano, which display many Etruscan reminiscences, be
compared with this account, it is possible to present a restoration of
the structure, correct in at least its principal aspects. Upon the
corners of the triply stepped, diminishing substructure stood twelve
cones, the thirteenth being in the centre of the upper terrace. (_Fig._
249.)
The fundamental idea of the Etruscan tombs was not alone the creation of
a monument which, covering the remains and protecting them from
desecration, should plainly mark the place of interment, but the
survivors sought, at the same time, to provide a room in which the dead
might dwell in a manner corresponding to their circumstances during
life. This conception was foreign to the Greeks, who seldom employed
burial chambers of great size; but it was prevalent among the Egyptians,
Persians, Lycians, and other nations of antiquity, though not by them
carried out so logically as by the Etruscans, who usually placed the
bodies upon stone benches, shaped like a bed, as if sleeping.
Sarcophagi, when existing at all, appear to have been added upon further
use of the sepulchre. It is thus, for instance, with the tomb of
Veii--of which _Fig._ 246, at the head of this section, gives an inner
view--with the tomb called that of Regulini-Galassi at Cære, and with
numerous other sepulchres discovered in various cemeteries, notably of
Southern Etruria. There, however, the chambers have mostly proved to
have been plundered in former centuries.
[Illustration: Fig. 249.--Restored Plan and Elevation of the Tomb of
Porsena.]
The dwelling-rooms represented are as diverse as those of the living
must naturally have been. No great width of these spaces was possible,
because of the imposed weight of the tumulus; and the apartments
consequently became narrow passages, ceiled by stone lintels, by blocks
leaning against each other as a gable, or by the gradual approach of the
horizontal courses by the projection of each over that beneath it.
Examples of all these methods are provided by the tombs of Alsium, the
present Monteroni; and the before-mentioned Regulini-Galassi tomb of
Cære, the present Cervetri. The latter, so called after its discoverers,
has furnished numerous treasures to the Etruscan Museum of the Vatican;
it consisted of a corridor separated by a wall into compartments, with
rock-cut lateral chambers of oval plan.
[Illustration: Fig. 250.--Ceiling of a Tomb at Cervetri.]
When the burial-chamber was a grotto--that is to say, was wholly
excavated from the native rock--a greater width could be obtained. The
ceiling was then carved, either to the outline of a low vault, as in the
Campana tomb at Veii, or, more commonly, in imitation of the beams of a
wooden ceiling. In the latter case various forms appear; for small inner
chambers a simple horizontal ceiling sufficed, and a simple
cross-timbering, overlaid with boards, was chosen as a pattern. The
spacious vestibules frequently have an inclined roof, when ridge-beams,
rafters, and the slats laid upon them are carefully and truthfully
imitated. (_Fig._ 250.) A noteworthy example at Corneto (_Fig._ 255)
shows in its outer room a plain imitation of the Italian atrium, or
court, of the kind termed by Vitruvius _cavædia displuviata_. It is
roofed by four main beams, laid diagonally and inclined outward, which
support the framework of a middle orifice for light and air, and shed
the water without instead of within. From this instance it appears that
the fundamental idea of the chief sepulchral chamber was the atrium,
which was the common gathering-place of the Italian house, as was the
peristyle of the Greek; while the inner chambers represented the various
rooms.
This imitation of an Etruscan dwelling--a remarkable counterpart, in
architectural respects, to the copies of the exterior of wooden houses
in the Lycian rock-cut tombs--was further carried out by a corresponding
ornamentation of the rooms. The couches hewn from the rock, upon which
the bodies rested, were at times a close imitation of cushions and
pillows; the supports beneath were sculptured like bedsteads, while
stone easy-chairs and footstools stood near to increase the apparent
comfort. The apertures in the wall which separates the two spaces are
reproductions of the framework of doors and windows. (_Fig._ 251.) The
sides of the chambers are stuccoed with plaster of Paris, and covered
with cheerful paintings, illustrating feasts, dances, sacred festivals,
and games. Every conceivable variety of household utensils hang upon the
walls or stand leaning against them, with great numbers of the
well-known painted vases and other works of pottery. These objects, when
not provided in reality, are imitated in stucco-relief and brilliantly
painted, as in a tomb at Cervetri (_Fig._ 252), where walls and piers
are covered with the representations of familiar household articles and
weapons.
[Illustration: Fig. 251.--Plan and Section of a Tomb at Cervetri.]
Although the tumuli were the more common funeral monuments, there were
parts of Etruria, among the Apennines, where the limited extent of the
level ground offered no spacious cemetery for the mounds, and where
rocky mountains and abrupt cliffs led to a different form of sepulchre.
A façade was cut upon the background provided by nature, where the
appearance of a dwelling could be imitated with little expenditure of
labor. The most numerous examples of these fronts are in the cemeteries
of Castel d’Asso, near Viterbo. The forms are plain, and not
particularly characteristic; a blind niche, the only architectural
feature of the lower surface, was substituted for a door, the real
entrance being through an insignificant shaft beneath the earth; and the
façade was terminated by a complicated cornice--a confused mass of
roundlets, cyma-mouldings, and rectangular bands, almost without
projection. A stairway was often cut upon one or both sides of the tomb,
leading to a platform or to other sepulchres situated upon a higher
level.
[Illustration: Fig. 252.--Interior of a Tomb at Cervetri.]
More remarkable than these monuments at Castel d’Asso are the rock-cut
façades of Norchia, to the west of Viterbo, upon which are imitated the
fronts of temples. The four columns or pilasters, now destroyed, were
placed wide apart, according to the proportions of the Tuscan order.
The entablature consists of a narrow epistyle and a frieze decorated
with clumsy triglyphs, or rather diglyphs, with pointed trunnels under
the regula, above which follows a weak cornice with dentils. The gable
is still more peculiar. Its outer ends curl into a volute, with a
Gorgoneion in its centre, which originally served as a base for the
acroteria; the triangle is filled with reliefs. The whole front gives
the impression of a barbarous mixture of indigenous elements with
Grecian forms, ill understood and roughly rendered. (_Fig._ 253.)
[Illustration: Fig. 253.--Temple Tomb at Norchia.]
These remains are interesting, but elements seem to have crept in which
could not originally have belonged to the Etruscan style, and the
façades of Norchia can hence be deemed of but secondary importance in
the study of the temple structures. The plan of these was quite
different from that of the Doric temple. Instead of the length being at
least double the width of the front, as in Greece, the breadth was here
to the length as five to six. The cella did not form a centre around
which stood the columns, but it entirely occupied the rear half of the
area, while the front remained open as a columned porch. Three cellas,
with the images of nearly related deities, were usually grouped
together, the middle one being the largest, and also of the greatest
hieratic importance. In some instances rows of columns were ranged upon
the two long sides of a cella; but the rear wall was always bare. All
artistic effect was here abandoned, and the building was, on this
account, often so placed as to abut immediately against an enclosing
rampart, or against a natural cliff.
The plan and general arrangement were thus entirely different from those
of the Greek temple. But the same thing is by no means to be said in
regard to the architectural details and members of the building. The
Etruscan column was closely allied to the Doric, and greatly resembled
it, in spite of some marked variations arising from the lingering
influence of the original timbered construction, and the inferior
perception of artistic proportions. The Etruscan shaft, in contrast to
the Doric, had a base consisting of a circular plinth and a tore, both
of equal height. The capital was formed of three parts, equally high, of
which the two upper, the echinos and abacus, were similar to the Doric.
The third beneath--the necking of the column--which, in the Greek
prototype, was divided from the shaft only by slight incisions or an
apophyge, was in this separated by a roundlet; what in Greek
architecture was based upon technical necessities, in Etruria became an
unmeaning decoration. The shaft, apparently not channelled, rose in a
lightness akin to the Ionic, tapering to three quarters of its lower
diameter, and reached a height of seven diameters. The unusually wide
distance between the columns--seven times the lower diameter of the
shaft--in contrast to that in the intercolumniation of the Doric style,
which rarely equalled two diameters, had its origin in the light wooden
beams, which did not require such frequent and powerful supports as did
the stone epistyle of the Greeks.