THE desire to express and to communicate ideas seems to have impelled
man from the earliest, and lies at the root of all art.
While much early ornament, as we have seen, is traceable to a
constructive origin, another kind, or another branch of the tree
of design is traceable to a symbolic origin, and springs from the
endeavour to express thought--to find a succinct language in which to
express some sense of the great powers of nature, and their influence
upon the daily life of man--to embody even in a pictorial emblem,
symbol, or allegory his primitive conceptions of the order of the
universe itself.
The mystery and wonders of nature absorbed the thoughts and touched the
imagination of early as of later man, and primitive symbolic forms, or
signs, constantly bear upon such ideas.
There is a symbolic sign (known to archæologists as the _fylfot_ or
_sauvastika_) of very simple form, which is found very widely scattered
among the relics of many different races and early peoples. "It is
found," says Dr. March (of the Lancashire and Cheshire Archæological
Society, who has written very suggestively and learnedly on the
subject), "on archaic Greek pottery, on the stamped clay of Swiss lake
dwellings, adorning Latin inscriptions on Roman altars"; is common in
India and Asia; is met with in Scandinavia, Iceland, Shetland, and
Scotland; in Celtic Ireland, in Saxon England, as well as in Germany.
The sign was adopted by Christians, is found in the catacombs of Rome,
in the cathedrals of Winchester and Exeter, on a shield in the Bayeux
tapestry, and on English mediæval brasses. It also occurs on a bell at
Hathersage Church in Derbyshire, dated 1617.
This sign appears to have originally signified the supreme god of the
Aryans, and became the emblem of the divinity from whom emanates the
one movement of the universe; later, it may have merely indicated the
axial rotation of the heavens round the Pole Star, and still later it
was used simply as a benedictory sign or mark of good luck. When the
feet were turned to the left the nocturnal movement of the stars was
suggested, and when the feet turned to the right the diurnal movement
of the sun was supposed to be indicated. The sign is frequently
placed in a circle. A very few of its stages will suffice to show
its transformation into ornament. We may thus see how a sign purely
symbolical, used as we should use writing, becomes in course of time a
decorative unit, and is incorporated into ornament. A kindred form is
composed of three crescents, which has its heraldic descendant in the
three armoured legs of the bearings of the Isle of Man. Here we seem to
see the idea of rotation very emphatically conveyed.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The primitive symbols for fire and water found (as on the Danish
_bracteate_) in association with the _fylfot_ sign shown above, form
linear patterns in themselves, and frequently recur in constructive and
surface ornament; the former suggesting the method of setting the Roman
bricks, called "herring bone," which constantly occurs in modern work
in brick paving and wood parquet, forming one of the simplest and most
satisfactory plans for floors and pavings in such materials.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: POLYNESIAN ORNAMENT FROM HERVEY ISLAND PADDLE.]
The zigzag, as an ornament incised on clay vessels painted in patterns,
or carved in masonry, has been a very favourite form from the ancient
Egyptian decorators (to whom it possessed its original significance
as water) onwards, becoming in later times more particularly
characteristic of Scandinavian ornament and Romanesque architecture.
The zigzag, however, appears to have an independent source and meaning
in the evolution of Polynesian ornament. In the so-called "Paddles,"
decorated with carved patterns which are now considered to be really
tables of descent, we may see rows of human figures arranged formally,
the legs and arms bent. The angles thus formed, in the course of
repetition and abbreviation, become simple lines of zigzag pattern.
The circle, a universal and important element in ornamental design of
all times and kinds, appears early as a symbol for the sun. We might
trace it from its primitive cross and disk and rayed ornament common
to all primitive art to the splendid Greek conception of Phœbus Apollo
in his chariot drawn by fiery horses, which figures so constantly
in Greek design, the circular flaming disk being represented in the
wheel, though in an early relief discovered by Dr. Schliemann the head
of Apollo is surrounded by rays, which gives the type generally used
by Gothic and modern designers in symbolic representations of the
sun--simply a face in the circle surrounded by rays.
Another means of symbolical expression by the use of the circle is to
be found in a type of Scandinavian ornament composed of three circles,
one within the other, which with the rayed sun frequently occurs
either singly, as in the form of a metal shield boss or a fibula, or as
the unit of a repeating textile pattern, or as a border. An Anglo-Saxon
lady in a Benedictional executed for St. Ethelwold at Winchester in
the tenth century (963-984) wears a dress so decorated. The original
symbolic meaning of this ornament is supposed to bear upon the
Norsemen's conception of the universe, the inner circle, representing
the _midgard_, or the earth; the second, the _osgard_, or _asgard_, the
abode of the gods; and the _utgard_, the world beyond, inhabited by
giants and spirits of evil. Beyond the outer circle is a circle of dots
signifying stars. (See fig. on p. 224.)
[Illustration]
[Illustration: POLYNESIAN ORNAMENT. EVOLUTION OF THE ZIGZAG.]
The old Norse sagas and the songs of Edda give the whole Norse scheme
of the universe. "Igdrasil, the great ash tree of the universe of
time and of life. The boughs stretched out into heaven, its highest
point, and overshadowed Walhalla, the hall of the heroes. Its
three roots reached down to dark Hel, to Jötunheim, the land of the
Hrimthurses, and to Midgard, the dwelling-place of the children of
men. The world-tree was ever green, for the fateful Norns sprinkled it
daily with the water of life from the fountain of Urd, which flowed
in Midgard. But the goat Heidrun, from whom was obtained the mead
that nourished the heroes, and the stag Eikthyrnir browsed upon the
leaf-buds, and upon the bark of the tree, while the roots down below
are gnawed by the dragon Nidhögg and innumerable worms: still the ash
could not wither until the last battle should be fought, where life,
time and the world were all to pass away. So the eagle sang its song of
creation and destruction on the highest branch of the tree."[10]
[10] "Asgard and the Gods."--DR. WAGNER.
It is interesting to compare such a conception with the ancient Hindu
idea of the world, which indeed may have been its original form as the
earlier Aryan conception. There is no tree, but the great snake of
time compasses all; the serpent with its tail in its mouth, an emblem
of continuous time which still survives. Upon this rests the tortoise,
which seems to correspond with the Norsemen's dragon, though here it
may serve as the solid basis of the world. The world appears as a sort
of dome in three tiers, reminding us of the Norsemen's three circles.
This is supported upon the backs of three elephants, which seem here to
fill the position of the Norns or the Fates.
The ash tree Igdrasil, the sustainer of the Norse universe, reminds
one of the eastern tree of life--the tree of life of the garden of
Eden, and the fountain of the rivers of the Asiatic paradise which,
with the figures of Adam and Eve, the typical father and mother of the
whole human race, have so constantly figured in art of all kinds, both
eastern and western, and continue to stand in the midst of the garden
in endless designs and pictures, surrounded by the birds and beasts, as
the type and emblem of the origin of the world in the Christian cosmos.
[Illustration: HINDU SYMBOL OF THE UNIVERSE.]
The ancient Egyptians, whose art was almost entirely in the nature
of a symbolic language, when they wished to express the divine
creative power which sustains the universe, designed a winged globe
encircled or upborne by two serpents--here we get, perhaps, the snake
of time again. Sometimes the scarabæus, or sacred beetle, emblem of
transformation and immortality, is represented covering an egg and
supporting the sun, and they are the wings of the scarabæus which are
given to the globe. This emblem is frequently carved over the gateways
to their temples.
Then the Egyptians had an elaborate symbolism connected with death and
the passage of the soul. The coffins and mummy cases are painted all
over with symbolic devices, figures, birds, and animals having a sacred
significance.
The soul is commonly represented as being borne in a boat, or barge,
with curved stem and stern, terminating in lotus flowers. (The lotus
symbolized new birth and resurrection.) The food for the journey is
shown in the urns placed underneath the couch. Two mourners or watchers
accompany it.
There is a copy of a large painting from Thebes in the British Museum
showing the judgment of the soul; the Devourer, a monster part
crocodile part hippopotamus, standing ready to devour the soul if the
verdict is unfavourable. Further on the accepted soul appears before
Osiris.
The goddess Nut (the heavens) is frequently painted upon the sarcophagi
and mummy cases in the form of a seated or kneeling figure of a woman
with very large wings outspread and curving upwards; she holds in her
hands the feather--the symbol of power or domination. (We still speak
of the feather in the cap.) She bears the disk of the sun upon her
head. To the Egyptians, indeed, we owe the very embodiment of the
mystery of existence itself--the sphinx who continues to propound her
riddle afresh to every age.
[Illustration: EXAMPLES OF EGYPTIAN SYMBOLISM.]
Greek mythology again, as exemplified in Greek art, expresses itself
symbolically, and shows a gradual development from the primitive,
ruder, and often savage personification of the powers of nature, more
allied to the conceptions of the Northmen, to the idealized, refined,
poetic and beautiful personifications of their later vase painting
and Phidian sculpture. The symbolic intention and the personifying
method was carried on and embodied in free and natural forms, though
always governed by the ornamental feeling and necessities of harmonious
relation to architectural and decorative conditions.
The first observers of the heavens, the primitive herdsman, hunter, the
fisherman and the shepherd, have left their symbolic heraldry in the
very stars above our heads; and Charles's or ceorls' wain and the signs
of the zodiac still remind us of the primitive life of a pastoral and
agricultural people.
The pediments of the Parthenon, for instance, are great pieces of
symbolical art, and at the same time most beautiful as figure design
and sculpture. It is distressing to think that so late as 1687 the
Parthenon was practically complete as far as its sculpture and
architecture. It was first used as a Greek Christian Church during the
Middle Ages, and then, falling into the hands of the Turks, became a
mosque; when the Venetians bombarded Athens in 1687 a shell dropped
into the Parthenon, where the Turks had stored their powder, and blew
out the whole centre of the building. Even in the broken and imperfect
state in which we are now only able to see them, from the more or less
complete figures and groups which compose its parts, we can gather an
idea of the harmony and unity of the whole, and the complete union
of the symbolism with the artistic treatment. The whole conception
strongly appealed to the sentiment of the Athenian citizen, since the
two pediments represented the contest of Athene and Poseidon for the
patronage of Athens, arts and laws, or the rule of the sea. We all
know that the arts and laws won, and that Athens is immortal by reason
of her art and poetry and philosophy, not by her command of the sea.
We modern English, perhaps, might do well to apply the lesson, and
consider that after all it is not in mere appropriation of riches,
extension of empire, material prosperity, or in our volume of trade,
that the true greatness of a country consists, but in the capacity and
heroism of her people.
In the eastern pediment the centre group expressed the birth of Athene
herself, or rather her first appearance amongst the Olympians--the
divine virgin deity and protectress of the city which bore her name,
and whose colossal statue in ivory and gold stood on the Acropolis in
front of the Parthenon. The other deities are grouped around, and on
one side we have the Parcæ, the three fates controlling the life of
man (which the Northmen embodied in the Norns); then, reclining at
one side where the pediment narrows, the figure of the great Athenian
hero, Theseus; and in the extreme angle the sun-god, Helios, with
outstretched arms is seen guiding his horses, which emerge from the
sea--being balanced at the corresponding angle by Selene, the moon,
descending with her horses into the sea. Thus, we have a series of
ideas expressed symbolically in heroic figures of deep import to the
Athenians, and having also in the suggestion of the fateful control of
human life, and the continuous order of nature in the rising sun and
setting moon, a wide and lasting significance apart from the beautiful
form and consummate art by which they are embodied.
The Parthenon stands high upon a rocky eminence, and from its western
door you can see the blue Ægean Sea, the island of Salamis, and the
harbour of Athens, the Piræus. Accordingly the sea-god Poseidon is
sculptured upon the western pediment, with Cecrops, the first king and
founder of Athens, with the queen. Another conspicuous figure there is
the reclining figure of Ilissus, who represents the stream that flows
around the western side of the Acropolis. The Greeks, and the Romans
who borrowed from them, always symbolized a stream or a fountain by
a reclining figure, half turned upon its side, and very frequently
leaning upon an urn placed horizontally, from the mouth of which flows
the wavy lines of water.
There is in the Vatican a Roman representation of the River Nile as a
colossal reclining figure with long flowing hair and beard, like Zeus
or Poseidon, holding a paddle. His tributaries being represented by a
number of small Cupid-like boys, who clamber and play about him, or
nestle at his side. The land of Egypt is typified by the sphinx upon
which the figure leans.
[Illustration: _Alinari Photo._]
IL NILO (VATICAN, ROME).]
Father Thames has often figured in "Punch" depicted by John Tenniel
as an old man with long hair and beard, not unlike his prototype, but
somewhat degraded and worse for wear.
The Greek gods, too, and their Roman representatives were each
distinguished by their proper and appropriate emblems, as well as by
marked differences of character and physical type.
Chronos, or Time, afterwards Saturn, is always known by his scythe;
Zeus or Jupiter, the Thunderer, by his thunderbolt; Poseidon or Neptune
by his trident; Helios by his horses, and Apollo by his bow; Aphrodite
or Venus by the golden apple won by the most beautiful; Pallas Athene,
or the Roman Minerva, as goddess of the arts, by her serpent, her
lamp, and her owl of wisdom; Artemis or Diana by the crescent moon;
Hermes or Mercury by his _caduceus_--the serpent-twined staff, which
has in modern times become an emblem of commerce--since Mercury was
the messenger, the fetcher and carrier of the ancients, quick-witted
and keen, and, according to some legends, not over scrupulous. His rod
and serpents have reference to the story of his parting two snakes
in combat, in which might be read a modern meaning of the individual
gaining fortune through commercial competition, though that is not its
usual signification. I only offer it as an example of reading a new
meaning into an ancient symbol. Then, of course, Heracles or Hercules
bears the apples of the Hesperides, or the Nemean lion's skin and his
club. In the Hesperides story of the dragon-guarded tree of golden
apples, and its three guardian sisters, we seem to have another form
of the tree of life and the fates. An interesting Greek relievo in
marble, enriched with mosaic in parts, at Wilton House, shows the
Hesperidean tree with the apples, and twined with the guardian serpent,
with Paris seated and Aphrodite approaching as if asking for the
apple--the prize of the most fair.
[Illustration: VENUS AND PARIS. THE APPLES OF THE HESPERIDES. FROM A
RELIEF AT WILTON HOUSE.]
In the ancient Greek story of Pandora and her box--so suggestive a
subject to artists, and fruitful in art--we have the classical version
of the fall of man and origin of evil.
In the no less picturesque and poetical story of Persephone (or
Proserpina), the daughter of Ceres, carried away by Pluto, the king
of the underworld, darkness, and death, we have a beautiful allegory
of the spring and the winter, since Persephone was allowed to return
every year to the earth for a season, after she had eaten of the fatal
pomegranate tree which grew in Pluto's garden.
One might multiply instances of the symbolic character of classical
story and its symbolic embodiment in Greek and Roman art, but we must
pass on to touch upon other sources and aspects of symbolism and emblem
in art.
We know that many of our old fairy tales have a symbolical origin
in ancient mythology, and have taken new and varied forms and local
colours as they have travelled from their southern and eastern homes,
and become naturalized in the art and literatures of different
countries.
In such tales as "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "The Sleeping Beauty
in the Wood," the climbing hero ascending the heavens to destroy the
giant of darkness, in the first, the hero penetrating the darkness and
awakening his destined bride from her enchanted sleep, in the second,
for instance, the old solar mythology has been traced, and if we could
trace the old folk tales back to their sources we might find them all
related to primitive mythology or hero and ancestor worship. Thus do
the spirits of the remote past sit at our firesides still, and kindle
the imagination of our little folks: and in the rich tapestry of story
and picture which each age weaves around it, elements from many
different sources are continually and almost inextricably interwoven,
as if the warp of human wonder and imagination was crossed with many
coloured threads of mythological lore, history and allegory, symbolism
and romance.
The early Christians, no less than the pagans, felt the necessity for
symbols of their faith; and while at first borrowing considerably, and
incorporating in their art forms belonging to the other faith they were
supplanting, gradually, with the rise of power and influence, emblems
more peculiarly belonging to an expression of the Christian ideal were
adopted, or underwent considerable transformation. The design met
with in the mosaics of the sixth century at Ravenna, the mausoleum of
Galla Placidia, of the two stags drinking from a fountain, embodying
the Psalmist's verse beginning, "As the hart panteth for the water
brooks," although from the imagery of the older Scriptures, became an
emblem of Christianity. The peacock appears, too, in Byzantine art,
carved upon stone sarcophagi as an emblem of immortal life, either from
the many eyes its feathers always open, or more probably because the
eye feathers are shed and renew themselves every year. The vine, too,
appears constantly as a Christian emblem, although with the Greeks it
was sacred to Dionysos, and represented to them the divine, life-giving
earth-spirit continually renewing itself, and bringing joy to men.
Although the symbolic use no less than the decorative beauty of winged
figures had long ago been recognized, as Asiatic, Egyptian, and
Greek art show, yet the Christian angel, both in its refined,
half-classical form, as developed by the early Italian painters and
sculptors from the thirteenth century onwards, and in northern Gothic
work, became a distinct and beautiful type in art. In the work of Fra
Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli the angel figures are especially lovely.
[Illustration: _Alinari Photo._]
CHRISTIAN EMBLEM. STAGS DRINKING (MAUSOLEO DI GALLA PLACIDIA, RAVENNA).]
[Illustration: _Alinari Photo._]
CHRISTIAN EMBLEM. PEACOCKS AND VINE. SARCOPHAGUS (ST. APOLLINARE IN
CLASSE, RAVENNA).]
[Illustration: _Brogi Photo._]
FRA ANGELICO. ANGEL (UFFIZI, FLORENCE).]
[Illustration: _Brogi Photo._]
FRA ANGELICO. ANGEL (UFFIZI, FLORENCE).]
No less distinct in its grotesqueness was the mediæval devil, although
its origin was very probably the satyr of ancient classical art. The
Roman satyr, with goat-legs and hoofs, bearded head, horns, and tail,
furnishes, in fact, a very close prototype; and, being banned long ago
as pagan when Christianity was in hand-to-hand conflict with paganism,
would be sufficient to associate such a form with evil. There are some
fiends represented in Orcagna's fresco, "The Triumph of Death," which
are quite satyr-like, despite talons and bats' wings. Although with the
Greeks the great god Pan is a mild and gentle deity enough, and though
of the earth earthy, in a sense, yet as symbolical of spontaneous
nature, and simple animal existence, piping on his reeds by the
riverside, he always remains a favourite with the poet and the artist.
Signorelli, for instance, in a beautiful picture (which our National
Gallery somehow missed the opportunity of acquiring), gives a fine
presentment of him.
It is interesting to compare the mediæval embodiments of evil with the
ancient Persian symbolical representation of a combat of a king with a
griffin, which may represent the conflict of Ormuzd and Ahrimanes as
the typical principles or embodied powers of good and of evil.
[Illustration: _Alinari Photo._]
ORCAGNA. FIENDS FROM "THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH" (FRESCO. CAMPO SANTO,
PISA).]
The creature (representing evil) is winged, and has birds' claws for
its hind feet (like Orcagna's fiends), and lions' paws for its fore
feet, the body of an ox or horse, the beak of an eagle or griffin,
in some instances, in others it appears with a bull's head, and is
certainly suggestive of power and terror.
The favourite Greek conception of the centaur, too, is an expressive
symbolic embodiment of animal force, and the mythical sculptural combat
in the metopes of the Parthenon is again suggestive of the conflict
between the higher and the lower elements of human nature.
Returning again to Christian art, we find the image of the lamb,
with the banner of the cross, was the badge of the Templar; and we
find abundant symbolism in the various emblems and attributes of the
apostles, saints, and martyrs, distinguished by the various emblems of
their evangel, conversion, or martyrdom. The mystic symbols of the four
evangelists are well known to every ecclesiastical designer--the angel
of St. Matthew, the lion of St. Mark, the bull of St. Luke, the eagle
of St. John.
The winged lion of St. Mark has become the distinguishing badge of the
city of Venice, since the evangelist was supposed to be buried in the
great church dedicated to his name. Its image in bronze upon the column
in the Piazza impresses itself upon the eye and imagination of every
visitor, while upon the companion columns we see the patron saint of
the ancient republic--St. Isidore, with the crocodile. Placed there in
1329, the statue recalls the early days of Venice, and suggests its
connection with the East.
[Illustration: COMBAT OF KING WITH GRIFFIN ANCIENT PERSIAN SCULPTURE
PERSEPOLIS.
From Perrot & Chipiez Hist of Ancient Art in Persia after Flandrin &
Coste.]
Now national heraldry is often derived from the bearings of families or
chiefs. Of such is our royal standard with its Plantagenet leopards and
red lion of the Scottish kings. Though in the Irish harp we seem to get
a purely national emblem, strictly speaking it is the heraldic bearing
of one of the four provinces--Leinster.
These heraldic bearings and badges had their origin in very remote
times, and take us back to earliest forms of human society, to the
gens, and the tribe, who named themselves after some animal or plant,
and adopted it as the distinguishing mark and ensign of the family to
which they belonged, or to such primitive times as we read of in Mr.
William Morris's "Roots of the Mountains" and "House of the Wolfings,"
where he speaks of "The House of the Steer" and "The House of the
Raven." The distinguishing badges would be carved or painted over the
porch, and borne upon the shield of the chief and the banner in battle.
In feudal times the practice was continued until family heraldry, owing
to intermarriage, became very complicated, and family shields much
quartered.
Distinctness and definite characterization of form were highly
necessary, since in battle it was important to distinguish your enemies
from your friends, and the banner of the chieftain, the knight, or
king, would be the rallying point for their followers and retainers.
Heraldry became regulated by strict rules, and is now called a science,
though its vitality and meaning have departed, except in an antiquarian
and archæological sense. It has, however, a certain decorative value
to the designer, as illustrating the principle of counterchange of
colours, and from the heraldry of the mediæval period much may be
learned in point of decorative treatment.
[Illustration: TYPICAL FORMS OF SHIELDS:
Norman Shield. From a MS. of the 12th Century in the National
Library, Paris.
Ancient Roman Shield (Scutum) Trajan's Column.
Ancient Greek Shield, Cylix Pinacotheca. Munich.
Gothic. Shield of John de Heere, 1332, from a brass at Brussels.
Shield of Edward the Black Prince, 1376.
Duke of Saxony, 1500.
SIDONIA of Saxony, 1510.
BRASS, De Rivis, 1567, Brussels.
Renascence Shield, with helmet & mantling Painted glass. Lichfield
Cathedral.]
The shield itself varies considerably in form. There is the round
shield of the ancients used both by Greeks and Norsemen. This with
the Greeks had pieces cut out at the sides sometimes. There was also
a moon-shaped shield, similar in form to the shield used by our old
invaders the Danes. Then we get the parallelogram, kite-shaped and
oval shields of the Romans; the kite-shaped shield of the Normans; the
lancet pointed shield, cut square at the top, of the first crusades.
The Gothic shield becomes more variously hollowed and shaped with the
development of plate armour, and in the fifteenth century frequently
has a space cut out on the outer edge to allow of the tilting lance
of the knight passing through without interfering with the guard. In
Renascence times there was a revival of classical and fanciful forms in
shields, and a return to its original form in the escutcheon, the term
being derived from the Latin (_cutis_) word for skin or hide, which
covered the ancient shields: but with the use of fire-arms shields
declined, until the small steel buckler for the short-sword became its
last working representative.
The character and the art of heraldic devices varies very much
according to these changes in methods of warfare, and was also affected
by the state of the arts generally.
We have only to compare the bold and frank heraldry of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries with the coach-painter's heraldry of the
present to realize the great change in feeling. Compare a Plantagenet
lion with a Victorian one, a mediæval griffin with a nineteenth century
specimen.
[Illustration: SICILIAN SILK TISSUE. TWELFTH CENTURY (SOUTH KENSINGTON
MUSEUM).]
The Gothic heraldic designer felt he must be simple and bold for the
sake both of distinctness and ornamental effect. He emphasized certain
features of his animals: he insisted very much, for instance, upon the
claws of the lion, its mane and tail, its open mouth and tongue; in
short, he felt it was his first business to make a bold and striking
pattern, and whatever the forms of his heraldry, they were controlled
by this feeling.
Heraldic devices formed a large part of the ornamental design of the
Middle Ages in all kinds of materials. They were abundantly used in
dress patterns and in hangings and textiles of all kinds. In the
beautiful Sicilian silk stuffs, for instance, a leading feature of the
repeat often consists of an emblematic or heraldic device of animals or
birds, which give character and agreeable massiveness to the pattern.
Mediæval brasses afford many beautiful examples of heraldic treatment.
Indeed, for ornamental feeling, expressed by very simple means and
under very limited conditions, those of the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth centuries afford beautiful instances, which may be most
profitably studied by designers of all kinds. Mr. Creeny's book on
the Continental brasses may be recommended as containing many very
beautiful examples from his own rubbings, notably from Belgium. Two
specimens are given in Chapter VIII.
[Illustration: EX BELLO PAX.
(From Alciati's "Emblems," 1522.)]
But the love of symbol and emblem did not expire with the vigour of
heraldic design. Indeed, a certain impetus was given to it by the
invention of printing, which, diverting it into another channel, seemed
to give it fresh life in association with literature. The sixteenth
century was remarkable for its love of allegory and emblem, which was
no doubt stimulated by the opening up of the stores of classical lore
at the Renascence, and by the general stir and activity of thought of
a time of transition, when new and old ideas were in conflict or in
process of fusion. Life was full of variety, contrast, hope, fear,
strife, love, art, romance and poetry, learning and the beginnings of
scientific discovery. Out of the seethings of such elements, joined
with the relics of mediæval _naïveté_ and quaintness, came into
existence the emblem book, which offered compact pictorial epigrams,
by means of the woodcut and the printing press, to fit every phase of
human life, thought, and vicissitude.
Holbein's "Dance of Death" was really a book of emblems, and the
subject was a favourite one with the German sixteenth century
designers. Very ancient ideas reappeared in these books, unearthed
by scholars, from all sorts of sources, from the ancient Egyptians
onwards. Such designs as those of the pelican feeding its young
from its own breast, and the stork carrying its parent on its back,
constantly reappear; and also the bees making their hive in a helmet,
with the motto _Ex bello pax_, which reminds one of Samson's riddle of
sweetness and strength.
[Illustration: FORTUNE, (From Alciati's "Emblems," 1522.)]
The device of the crab, too, with a butterfly between its claws, and
the motto _Festina lente_--hasten slowly--is a favourite. The phœnix,
also, borrowed from ancient Egypt, but nowadays generally associated
with life insurance. Fortune, with the sail of a ship standing on a
globe, and sometimes a wheel, floating in a tempestuous sea, to express
her fickleness and uncertainty, often appears. The fate of Ambition,
in the fable of Phaeton falling from Apollo's car; the snake in the
grass--_Latet anguis in herba_; labour in vain, a man pouring water
into a sieve, the sieve held by blindfold Love, also figures; the ass
loaded with dainties and rich food, but stooping to eat the thistle
by the wayside, appears as a symbol of Avarice. Æsop's fables were
utilized, and classical mythology, in fact all was fish to the moral
net of the emblem designer, and the multiplication of such collections
in printed books is evidence of the moralizing, philosophizing tendency
of the times, and the love of personifying and imaging ideas.
[Illustration: AMBITION, (From Alciati's "Emblems," 1522.)]
[Illustration: AVARICE, (From Alciati's "Emblems," 1522.)]
Elaborate designs, such as one of Romeyn de Hooghe (1670)--following
the tablet of Cebes, B.C. 390, or the Latin version of
1507--allegorizing human life as a whole, from birth to death, under
the device of a labyrinth or maze, with figures wandering about in
its walks, under different influences, down to simple devices like
the moth and the candle, are comprehended in these emblem books; but
it is only reducing to small compass and to compact, portable, and
popular form the same spirit of quaint invention which covered the
walls and ceilings of great houses and public halls and tapestries
with personifications, like the splendid series of the "Triumphs" of
Petrarch, Love, Time, Death, and Chastity in our National Museum at
South Kensington, as well as endless embodiments of the seasons, the
senses, the virtues, and the vices. Emblematic art, however, like
heraldry, became overlaid with pedantry, and its artistic interest died
when its form became prescribed, and precedent and rule took the place
of original invention.
The chief scope for symbol and emblem in our time lies in the province
of decorative design, which in its highest forms may be regarded as
the metre or poetry of art. The designer, like the poet, rejoices in
certain limitations, which, while they fix and control his form and
treatment, leave him extraordinary freedom in dealing suggestively with
themes difficult or impossible to be approached in purely naturalistic
form.
It is true we find emblematic art in very stiff and degraded forms, and
applied to quite humdrum purposes. It is largely used in commerce, for
instance, and one may find classical fable and symbolism reduced to a
trade mark or a poster. Still trade marks, after all, fill the place,
in our modern commercial war, of the old knightly heraldry--shorn
of its splendour and romance, certainly--and given trade marks and
posters they might as well be designed, and would serve their purpose
more effectively if they were treated more according to the principles
of mediæval heraldry, since they would gain at once character,
distinctness, and decorative effect.
Allegorical art has, too, a modern popular form in the region of
political satire and caricature, often potent to stir or to concentrate
political feeling. This is almost a distinct province, to which many
able and vigorous artists devote their lives and show their invention
in the effective way in which the political situation is put into some
piece of familiar symbolism which all can recognize and remember.
In the region of poetic design symbolism must always hold its place.
When the artist desires to soar a little above the passing moment to
suggest the past, to peer into the future; when he looks at human life
as a complete whole, and the life of the race as an unbroken chain;
when he would deal with thoughts of mans origin and destiny, of the
powers and passions that sway him, of love, of hope and fear, of the
mystery of life and nature, the drama of the seasons, he must use
figurative language, and seek the beautiful and permanent images of
emblematic design.