1. The period of the great civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Nile,
beginning approximately about 5000 B.C. and ending, roughly speaking
(but some of them much earlier), with the spread of Greek power and
Greek ideas under Alexander. On the main characteristics of the art of
these empires we have already had occasion to touch.
2. The Minoan and Mycenaean period, partly contemporary with the above
and dating probably from about 2500 to about 1000 B.C.; our knowledge of
this is due entirely to quite recent researches, confined at present to
certain points in Greece and Asia Minor, in Crete and other islands in
the Mediterranean basin; enough has already been revealed to prove the
existence of an original and highly developed palace-architecture and of
forms of relief-painting and of all the minor and decorative arts more
free and animated than anything known to Egypt or Assyria. (See CRETE
and AEGEAN CIVILIZATION.)
3. The Greek and Roman period, from about 700 B.C. to the final triumph
of Christianity, say A.D. 400. During the first two or three centuries
of this period the Hellenic race, beginning again after the cataclysm
which had swallowed up the earlier Mediterranean civilizations, carried
to perfection its most characteristic art, that of sculpture, in the
endeavour to embody worthily its ideas of the supernatural powers
governing the world. Putting aside the monstrous gods of Egypt and the
East, it found its ideals in varieties of the human form as presented by
the most harmoniously developed specimens of the race under conditions
of the greatest health, activity and grace. In the figures of Greek
sculpture, both decorative and independent, and no doubt in Greek
painting also (but of that we can only judge from such specimens of the
minor handicrafts, chiefly vase-paintings, as have come down to us)--in
these were set for the whole Western world the types and standards of
human beauty, and in their grouping and arrangement the types and
standards of rhythmical composition and design. Gradually human
portraiture and themes of everyday life took their place beside
representations of the gods and heroes. New schools struck out new
tendencies within certain limits. But in the general standards of form
and design there was in the imitative arts relatively little change,
though towards the end there was much failure of skill, throughout the
whole period. The one great change was in architecture. Greece had been
content with the constructive system of columns and horizontal
entablature, and under that system had invented and perfected her three
successive modes or orders of architecture--the Doric, Ionic and
Corinthian. The genius of Rome invented the round arch, and by help of
that system erected throughout her subject world a thousand vast
constructions--temple, palace, bath, amphitheatre, forum, aqueduct,
triumphal gate and the rest--on a scale of monumental grandeur such as
Greece had never known.
4. The Christian period, from about 400 to about 1400. The decay or
petrifaction of the imitative arts which had set in during the latter
days of Rome continued during all the earlier centuries of the Christian
period, while the Western world was in process of remaking. Free
painting and free sculpture practically ceased to exist. Roman
architecture underwent modifications under the influence of the church
and of the new conditions of life; the Byzantine form, touched at
certain times and places with oriental influences, developed itself
wherever the Eastern Empire still stood erect in decay; the Romanesque
form, as it is called, in the barbarian-conquered regions of the west
and north. Sculpture existed for centuries only in rudimentary and
subordinate forms as applied to architecture; painting only in forms of
rigid though sometimes impressive hieratic imagery, whether as mosaic in
the apses and vaults of churches, as rude illumination in MSS. and
service-books, or as still ruder altar-painting carried on according to
a frozen mechanical tradition. As time went on and medieval institutions
developed themselves, a gradual vitality dawned in all these arts. In
architecture the introduction of the pointed or Gothic arch at the
beginning of the 13th century led to almost as great a revolution as
that brought about by the use of the round or vaulted arch among the
Romans. The same vital impulse that informed the new Gothic architecture
breathed into the still quite subordinate arts of sculpture and painting
(the latter now including the craft of glass-painting for church
windows) a new spirit whether of devotional intensity or sweetness, or
of human pathos or rugged humour, with a new technical skill for its
embodiment. We have not set down, as is usually done, a specifically
Gothic period in art, for this reason. The characteristic of the whole
Christian period is that its dominant art is architecture, chiefly
employed in the service of the church, with painting and sculpture only
subordinately introduced for its enrichment. It makes no essential
difference that from the 5th to the 12th century the forms of this art
were derived with various modifications from the round-arched
architecture of the Empire, and that by the 13th century new forms both
of construction and decoration, in which the round arch was replaced by
the pointed, had been invented in France, and from thence spread abroad
to Germany and Scandinavia, Great Britain, Spain, and last and most
superficially to Italy. The essential difference only begins when the
imitative arts, sculpture and painting, begin to emancipate and detach
themselves, to exist and strive after perfection on their own account.
This happened first and very partially in Italy with the artificers of
the 13th and 14th centuries--with the sculptors Nicola, Giovanni, and
Andrea Pisano; the Sienese group of painters, Duccio, Simone Martini,
and the Lorenzetti; and the Florentine group, Cimabue (if Cimabue is not
a myth), Giotto and the Giotteschi. The development of the rapid and
flowing craft of fresco in place of the laborious and piecemeal craft of
mosaic (henceforth for several centuries almost lost) was a great aid to
this movement. After a period of something like stagnation, the movement
received a vigorous fresh impulse soon after 1400, at about which date
in Italy (not till near a century later in northern Europe) the
beginning of the Renaissance is usually fixed.
5. The Renaissance period, from about 1400 to about 1600. The passion
for classic literature, stimulated by the influence of Greek scholars
into Italy after the fall of Constantinople; the enthusiastic revival of
classic forms of architecture by architects like Brunelleschi and
Alberti; the achievements in sculpture and painting of masters like
Donatello and Masaccio, based on a new and impassioned study of nature
and the antique together; these are the outstanding and universally
known symptoms of the Italian Renaissance in the second and third
quarters of the 15th century. Promptly and contemptuously in Italy, much
more gradually and incompletely in the north, Gothic principles of
construction and decoration were cast aside for classical principles, as
reformulated by eager spirits from a combined study of Roman remains and
of the text of Vitruvius. To the ideal types of devout and prayer-worn,
ascetic and spiritualized humanity (tempered in certain subjects with
elements of the homely and the grotesque), which the spirit of the
middle ages had dictated to the sculptor and the painter, succeeded
ideals of physical power, beauty and grace rivalling the Hellenic. The
personages of the Christian faith and story were brought into visible
kindred with those of ancient paganism. In the hands of certain artists
a fortunate blending of the two ideals yielded results of a poignant and
unique charm, which for us, who are the heirs both of antiquity and the
middle ages, is far from being yet exhausted. At the same time, the love
alike of republics, great princes, churchmen, nobles and merchants for
works of art gave employment to sculptors and painters on themes other
than ecclesiastical. The taste for civic or personal commemoration, for
portraiture, for illustrations of allegory, romance and classic fable,
covered with pictures the walls of council halls, of public and private
palaces, and of villas. The invention of the oil medium by the painters
of Flanders, and its gradual adoption by the Venetians and other schools
of Italy for all purposes except the external decorations of buildings,
added enormously to the resources of the art in rivalry with nature, and
to the splendour of its results as objects of pride and luxury. The
glories of matured Italian art reacted, not always favourably, on the
north. The great days of Flemish painting had been from about 1430 to
1500, before any appreciable influence of the Renaissance had touched
the schools of Brussels, of Bruges or of Antwerp. By about 1520 the
artists of those schools had begun, except in portraiture, to lose their
native vigour and originality by contact with the alien south. Among the
great artists of Germany in the first half of the 16th century the work
of one or two, like Burgkmair and Holbein, shows Italian influence
reconciled not unsuccessfully with native instinct; but Durer, the
greatest of them, remained in all essentials Gothic and German to the
end. During the last half of the century, the Netherlands and Germany
alike yielded little but work of mongrel Teutonized Italian or
Italianized Teutonic type, until towards its close Rubens accomplished,
in the fire of his prodigious temperament, a true fusion of Flemish and
Venetian qualities, at the same time closing gloriously the Renaissance
period properly so called, and handing on an example which irresistibly
affected a great part of modern painting.
6. Modern period, from about 1600 to the present time. During this
period architecture remained in all European countries, until the 19th
century, more or less completely under the influence of the Italian
Renaissance. The principles of the classical revival had during a
century or more of transition been gradually absorbed, first by France,
then by Germany, the Low Countries, and Spain, and last by England, each
country modifying the style according to its degree of knowledge or
ignorance, its needs, instincts and traditions. Sculpture, which in the
hands of the great masters of the earlier and later Renaissance in
Italy had almost equalled its ancient glories, nay, in those of
Michelangelo had actually surpassed them in the qualities at least of
superhuman energy and intellectual expression--sculpture lost the sense
of its true limitations, and entered, with the work of Bernini and even
earlier, into an extravagant or "baroque" period of relaxed and bulging
line, of exaggerated and ostentatious virtuosity. In this it followed
the lead given by Italian architecture, by Jesuit church architecture
especially, at and after the height of the Catholic reaction. From the
monumental and memorial purposes which sculpture principally serves, it
remained still, except in purely iconic uses, attached to or dependent
on architecture. Not so painting, which asserted its independence more
and more. In Protestant countries the old ecclesiastical patronage of
the art had quite died out; in those that remained Catholic it
continued, and even received a new stimulus from the anti-Protestant
reaction. The demand for religious art was supplied with abundance of
traditional facility, of technical accomplishment and devotional
display, but with a loss of the old sincerity and inspiration. Almost
all painting, even for the most extensive and monumental phases of
decoration in church or palace or civic hall, was on canvas stretched
over or fitted into its allotted space in the architecture, and the art
of fresco, even in Venice, its last stronghold, was for a time neglected
or forgotten. Portable paintings for princely or private galleries and
cabinets became the chief and most characteristic products of the art.
The subjects of painting multiplied themselves. All manner of new
aspects of life and nature were brought within the technical compass of
the painter. Besides devotional and classical subjects and portraiture,
daily life in all its phases, down to the homeliest and grossest, the
life of the parlour and the tavern, of field and shore and sea, with
landscape in all its varieties, took their place as material for the
painter. The truths of indoor and outdoor atmosphere were translated on
canvas for the first time. The Dutchmen from about 1620 to 1670 were the
most active innovators and path-breakers of modern art along all these
lines. The greatest of them, Rembrandt, dealt, as has been said, like a
master and a magician with the problems of human individuality as
revealed in a mysterious colour and shadow world of his own invention.
At the same time a painter of no less power in Spain, Velazquez, viewing
the world in the natural light of every day, showed for the first time
how vitally and subtly paint could render the relief and mutual values
of figures and objects in space, the essential truth of their visible
relations and reactions in the enveloping atmosphere. The achievement of
these two victorious innovators has only come to be fully understood in
our own day. The simultaneous conquest of Claude le Lorrain, on the
other hand, over the atmospheric glow of summer and sunset on the Roman
Campagna and the adjacent hills and coasts, found acceptance instantly,
less perhaps for its own sake than because of the classical associations
of the scenery which he depicted. The vast widening of the field of the
painter's art and multiplication of its subjects, which thus took place
at the dawn of the modern period, were gains attended by one drawback,
the loss, namely, of the sense of high seriousness and universal appeal
which belonged to the art while its themes had been those of religion
and classic story almost exclusively.
Classical and romantic revivals.
During the three hundred or so years of the modern period, academical
schools attempting, more or less unsuccessfully, to carry on the great
Italian and classical traditions of the Renaissance have not ceased to
exist side by side with those which have striven to express new ways of
seeing and feeling. Sometimes, as in France first under Louis XIV., and
again for forty years from the beginning of the Revolution to the dawn
of romanticism, such schools have succeeded in crushing out and
discrediting all efforts in other directions. Between these two epochs,
say from 1710 to 1780, French 18th-century ideals of social elegance and
brilliant frivolity expressed themselves in forms of great
accomplishment and vivacity both in poetry and sculpture, from the days
of Watteau to those of Fragonard and Clodion. At the same time England
produced one of the finest and at the same time most national and
downright masters of the brush in Hogarth; two of the greatest
aristocratic portrait-painters of the world in Reynolds and
Gainsborough, each of whom modified according to his own instincts the
tradition imported in the previous century by Van Dyck, the greatest
pupil of Rubens (Reynolds fusing with this influence those of Rembrandt
and the Venetians in almost equal shares). Pastoral landscape in the
hands of Gainsborough, classical, following Claude, in those of
Wilson--these together with the humble but wholesome discipline of
topographical illustration led on to the ambitious, wide-ranging and
often inspired experiments of Turner, and to the narrower but more
secure achievements of Constable in the same field, and made this
country the acknowledged pioneer of modern landscape art. In the
meantime the wave of classical enthusiasm which passed over Europe in
the later years of the 18th century had produced in architecture
generally a return to severer principles and purer lines, in reaction
from the baroque and the rococo Renaissance styles of the preceding
century and a half. In Italian sculpture, the same movement inspired
during the Napoleonic period the over-honeyed accomplishment of Canova
and his school; in northern sculpture, the more truly antique but almost
wholly imitative work of Thorwaldsen, and the pure and rhythmic grace of
the English Flaxman, a true master of design though scarcely of
sculpture strictly so called. The same movement again was partly
responsible in English painting and illustration from about 1770 to 1820
for much pastoral and idyllic work of agreeable but shallow elegance. In
French painting the classic movement struck deeper. Along with much
would-be Roman attitudinizing there was much real, if rigid, power in
the work of David, much accomplished purity and sweetness in that of
Prud'hon. The last and truest classic of France, and at the same time in
portraiture the greatest realist, Ingres, held high the standard of his
cause even through and past the great romantic revival which began with
Gericault and culminated in Delacroix and the school of landscape
painters who had received their inspiration from Constable. The main
instincts embodied in the Romantic movement were the awakening of the
human spirit to an eager retrospective love of the past, and especially
of the medieval past, and simultaneously to a new passion for the
beauties of nature, and especially of wild nature. Germany and England
preceded France in this double awakening; in both countries the movement
inspired a fine literature, but in neither did it express itself so
fully and self-consciously through literature and the other arts
together as it did in France when the hour struck. The revival of
medieval sentiment in Germany had inspired comparatively early in the
century the learned but somewhat aridly ascetic and essentially
unpainterlike work of the group of artists who styled themselves
_Nazarener_. In England the same revival expressed itself during a great
part of the Victorian age in an enthusiastic return to the early Gothic
ecclesiastical styles of architecture, a return unsuccessful upon the
whole, because in pursuit of archaeological and grammatical detail the
root qualities of right proportion and organic design were too often
neglected.
The pre-Raphaelites.
Allied with this Gothic revival, and stimulated like it by the
persuasive conviction and brilliant resource of Ruskin in criticism was
the pre-Raphaelite movement in painting. Among the artists identified
with this movement there was little really in common except in
impatience of the prevailing modes of empty academic convention or
anecdotic frivolity. The name covered for a while the essentially
divergent aims of a vigorous unintellectual craftsman like Millais,
fired for a few years in youth by contact with more imaginative
temperaments, of a strenuous imitator of unharmonized local colours and
unsubordinated natural facts like Holman Hunt, and of born poets and
impassioned medievalists like Rossetti and after him Burne-Jones.
Meantime in France, putting aside the work of the great Delacroix, the
impulse of 1830 expressed itself best and most lastingly in the
monumental work of Daumier both in caricature and romance, the
impressive and significant treatment of peasant life and labour by J.F.
Millet, the vitally truthful pastoral and landscape work of Troyon,
Corot, Daubigny and the rest.
Contemporary tendencies.
Since the exhaustion of the Romantic movement, the other movements that
have been taking place in European art have been too numerous and too
rapid to be touched on here to any purpose. Both in sculpture and
painting France has taken and held the lead. Mention has already been
made of the special tendency in recent sculpture identified with the
name and influence of Rodin. In painting there has been the fertilizing
and transforming influence of Japan on the decorative ideals of the
West; there have been successively the Realist movement, the movements
of the Impressionists, the Luminists, the Neo-impressionists, the
Independents, movements initiated almost always in Paris, and in other
countries eagerly adopted and absorbed, or angrily controverted and
denounced, or simply neglected and ignored according to the predilection
of this or that group of artists and critics; there has been a vast
amount of heterogeneous, hurried, confident and clamant innovating
activity in this direction and in that, much of it perhaps doomed to
futility in the eyes of posterity, but at any rate there has not been
stagnation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--To attempt in this place anything like a full
bibliography covering so vast a field would be idle. Many of the books
necessary to a first-hand study of the subject are cited in the
article AESTHETICS. The following are some of the most important
writings actually referred to in the text, English translations being
mentioned where they exist: Aristotle, _Poetics_, edited with critical
notes and a translation by S.H. Butcher (1898); S.H. Butcher,
_Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_, with a critical text and
a translation of the _Poetics_ (1902); Plato, _Republic_, bk. x. 596
ff., 600 ff. (Grote, iii. 117 ff.; Jowett, iii. 489 ff.); B.
Bosanquet, _Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art_
(_Asthetik_), translation with notes and prefatory essay (1896); _The
Philosophy of Art, an Introduction to the Science of Aesthetics_, by
Hegel and C.L. Michelet, trans. Hastie (1886); Schiller, _Briefe uber
die asthetische Erziehung des Menschen_ (trans, by G.J. Weiss, with
preface by J. Chapman, 1845; also in Bohn's Standard Library, 1846);
Herbert Spencer, _First Principles_, ch. xxii.; Gottfried Semper, _Der
Stil_ (1860-1863); Hippolyte Taine, _De l'ideal dans l'art_ (1867),
_Philosophie de l'art en Grece_ (1869), _Philosophie de l'art en
Italie_, _Philosophic de l'art dans les Pays-Bas_ (translations in 5
vols. by J. Durand, New York, 1889); Karl Groos, _Die Spiele der
Menschen_ (1899; trans, by E.L. Baldwin, 1901), and _Die Spiele der
Tiere_ (2nd ed., 1907; trans, by E.L. Baldwin, 1898); Ernst Grosse,
_Die Anfange der Kunst_ (1894; trans, in the Anthropological Series,
1894); Yrjo Hirn, _The Origins of Art_ (1900); G. Baldwin Brown, _The
Fine Arts_ (2nd ed., 1902); Felix Clay, _The Origins of the Sense of
Beauty_ (1908). For a general history of the manual or shaping group
of arts, C.J.F. Schnasse, _Geschichte der bildenden Kunste_ (2nd ed.,
1866-1879), though in parts obsolete, is still unsuperseded. A very
summary general view is given in Salomon Reinach, _The Story of Art
through the Ages_ (trans. by Florence Simmonds, 1904); a general
history of the same group was undertaken by Giulio Carotti (English
translation by Alice Todd, 1909). (S. C.)
FINGER, one of the five members with which the hand is terminated, a
digit; sometimes the word is restricted to the four digits other than
the thumb. The word is common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch _vinger_
and Ger. _Finger_; probably the ultimate origin is to be found in the
root of the words appearing in Greek [Greek: pente], Lat. quinque,
_five_. (See SKELETON: _Appendicular_.)
FINGER-AND-TOE, CLUB ROOT or ANBURY, a destructive plant-disease known
botanically as _Plasmodiophora Brassicae_, which attacks cabbages,
turnips, radishes and other cultivated and wild members of the order
Cruciferae. It is one of the so-called Slime-fungi or Myxogastres. The
presence of the disease is indicated by nodules or warty outgrowths on
the root, which sometimes becomes much swollen and ultimately rots,
emitting an unpleasant smell. The disease is contracted from spores
present in the soil, which enter the root. The parasite develops within
the living cells of the plant, forming a glairy mass of protoplasm known
as the plasmodium, the form of which alters from time to time. The cells
which have been attacked increase enormously in size and the disease
spreads from cell to cell. Ultimately the _plasmodium_ becomes resolved
into numerous minute round spores which, on the decay of the root, are
set free in the soil. A preventive is quicklime, the application of
which destroys the spores in the soil. It is important that diseased
plants should be burned, also that cruciferous weeds, such as shepherd's
purse, charlock, &c., should not be allowed to grow in places where
plants of the same order are in cultivation.
[Illustration: Finger-and-Toe (_Plasmodiophora Brassicae_).
1, Turnip attacked by the disease, reduced.
2, A cell of the tissue containing the plasmodium; the smaller cells
at the sides are unaffected.
3, Infected cell, showing spore formation. 2, 3, highly magnified.]
FINGER-PRINTS. The use of finger-prints as a system of identification
(q.v.) is of very ancient origin, and was known from the earliest days
in the East when the impression of his thumb was the monarch's
sign-manual. A relic of this practice is still preserved in the formal
confirmation of a legal document by "delivering" it as one's "act and
deed." The permanent character of the finger-print was first put forward
scientifically in 1823 by J.E. Purkinje, an eminent professor of
physiology, who read a paper before the university of Breslau, adducing
nine standard types of impressions and advocating a system of
classification which attracted no great attention. Bewick, the English
draughtsman, struck with the delicate qualities of the lineation, made
engravings of the impression of two of his finger-tips and used them as
signatures for his work. Sir Francis Galton, who laboured to introduce
finger-prints, points out that they were proposed for the identification
of Chinese immigrants when registering their arrival in the United
States. In India, Sir William Herschel desired to use finger-prints in
the courts of the Hugli district to prevent false personation and fix
the identity upon the executants of documents. The Bengal police under
the wise administration of Sir E.R. Henry, afterwards chief commissioner
of the London metropolitan police, usefully adopted finger-prints for
the detection of crime, an example followed in many public departments
in India. A transfer of property is attested by the thumb-mark, so are
documents when registered, and advances made to opium-growers or to
labourers on account of wages, or to contracts signed under the
emigration law, or medical certificates to vouch for the persons
examined, all tending to check the frauds and impostures constantly
attempted.
The prints depend upon a peculiarity seen in the human hand and to some
extent in the human foot. The skin is traversed in all directions by
creases and ridges, which are ineradicable and show no change from
childhood to extreme old age. The persistence of the markings of the
finger-tips has been proved beyond all question, and this universally
accepted quality has been the basis of the present system of
identification. The impressions, when examined, show that the ridges
appear in certain fixed patterns, from which an alphabet of signs or a
system of notation has been arrived at for convenience of record. As
the result of much experiment a fourfold scheme of classification has
been evolved, and the various types employed are styled "arches,"
"loops," "whorls" and "composites." There are seven subclasses, and all
are perfectly distinguishable by an expert, who can describe each by its
particular symbol in the code arranged, so that the whole "print" can be
read as a distinct and separate expression. Very few, and the simplest,
appliances are required for taking the print--a sheet of white paper, a
tin slab, and some printer's ink. Scars or malformations do not
interfere with the result.
The unchanging character of the finger-prints has repeatedly helped in
the detection of crime. We may quote the case of the thief who broke
into a residence and among other things helped himself to a glass of
wine, leaving two finger-prints upon the tumbler which were subsequently
found to be identical with those of a notorious criminal who was
arrested, pleaded guilty and was convicted. Another burglar effected
entrance by removing a pane of glass from a basement window, but,
unhappily for him, left his imprints, which were referred to the
registry and found to agree exactly with those of a convict at large;
his address was known, and when visited some of the stolen property was
found in his possession. In India a murderer was identified by the brown
mark of a blood-stained thumb he had left when rummaging amongst the
papers of the deceased. This man was convicted of theft but not of the
murder.
The keystone to the whole system is the central office where the
register or index of all criminals is kept for ready reference. The
operators need no special gifts or lengthy training; method and accuracy
suffice, and abundant checks exist to obviate incorrect classification
and reduce the liability to error.
AUTHORITIES.--F. Galton, _Finger Prints_ (1892), _Fingerprint
Directories_ (1895); E.R. Henry, _Classification and Uses of Finger
Prints_; A. Yvert, _L'Identification par les empreintes digitales
palmaires_ (1905); K. Windt, R.S. Kodicek, _Daktyloskopie. Verwertung
von Fingerabdrucken zu Identifizierungszwecken_ (Vienna, 1904); E.
Loeard, _La Dactyloscopie. Identification des recidivistes par les
empreintes digitales_ (1904); H. Faulds, _Guide to Finger-Print
Identification_ (1905); H. Gross, _Criminal Investigation_ (trans. J.
and J.C. Adam, 1907). (A. G.)
FINGO, or FENGU (_Ama-Fengu_, "wanderers"), a Bantu-Negro people, allied
to the Zulu family, who have given their name to the district of
Fingoland, the S.W. portion of the Transkei division of the Cape
province. The Fingo tribes were formed from the nations broken up by
Chaka and his Zulu; after some years of oppression by the Xosa they
appealed to the Cape government in 1835, and were permitted by Sir
Benjamin D'Urban to settle on the banks of the Great Fish river. They
have been always loyal to the British, and have steadily advanced in
social respects. They have largely adapted themselves to western
culture, wearing European clothes, supporting their schools by voluntary
contributions, editing newspapers, translating English poetry, and
setting their national songs to correct music. The majority call
themselves Christians and many of them have intermarried with Europeans.
(See KAFFIRS.)
FINIAL (a variant of "final"; Lat. _finis_, end), an architectural term
for the termination of a pinnacle, gable end, buttress, or canopy,
consisting of a bunch of foliage, which bears a close affinity to the
crockets (q.v.) running up the gables, turrets or spires, and in some
cases may be formed by uniting four or more crockets together. Sometimes
the term is incorrectly applied to a small pinnacle of which it is only
the termination (see EPI).
FINIGUERRA, MASO [i.e. TOMMASO] (1426-1464), Florentine goldsmith,
draughtsman, and engraver, whose name is distinguished in the history of
art and craftsmanship for reasons which are partly mythical. Vasari
represents him as having been the first inventor of the art of engraving
(using that word in its popular sense of taking impressions on paper
from designs engraved on metal plates), and Vasari's account was
universally accepted and repeated until recent research proved it
erroneous. What we actually know from contemporary documents of
Finiguerra, his origin, his life, and his work, is as follows. He was
the son of Antonio, and grandson of Tommaso Finiguerra or Finiguerri,
both goldsmiths of Florence, and was born in Sta Lucia d'Ognissanti in
1426. He was brought up to the hereditary profession of goldsmith and
was early distinguished for his work in niello. In his twenty-third year
(1449) we find note of a sulphur cast from a niello of his workmanship
being handed over by the painter Alessio Baldovinetti to a customer in
payment or exchange for a dagger received. In 1452 Maso delivered and
was paid for a niellated silver pax commissioned for the baptistery of
St John by the consuls of the gild of merchants or Calimara. By this
time he seems to have left his father's workshop: and we know that he
was in partnership with Piero di Bartolommeo di Sali and the great
Antonio Pollaiuolo in 1457, when the firm had an order for a pair of
fine silver candlesticks for the church of San Jacopo at Pistoia. In
1459 we find Finiguerra noted in the house-book of Giovanni Rucellai as
one of several distinguished artists with whose works the Casa Rucellai
was adorned. In 1462 he is recorded as having supplied another wealthy
Florentine, Cino di Filippo Rinuccini, with waist-buckles, and in the
years next following with forks and spoons for christening presents. In
1463 he drew cartoons, the heads of which were coloured by Alessio
Baldovinetti, for five or more figures for the sacristy of the duomo,
which was being decorated in wood inlay by a group of artists with
Giuliano da Maiano at their head. On the 14th of December 1464 Maso
Finiguerra made his will, and died shortly afterwards.
These documentary facts are supplemented by several writers of the next
generation with statements more or less authoritative. Thus Baccio
Bandinelli says that Maso was among the young artists who worked under
Ghiberti on the famous gates of the baptistery; Benvenuto Cellini that
he was the finest master of his day in the art of niello engraving, and
that his masterpiece was a pax of the Crucifixion in the baptistery of
St John; that being no great draughtsman, he in most cases, including
that of the above-mentioned pax, worked from drawings by Antonio
Pollaiuolo. Vasari, on the other hand, allowing that Maso was a much
inferior draughtsman to Pollaiuolo, mentions nevertheless a number of
original drawings by him as existing in his own collection, "with
figures both draped and nude, and histories drawn in water-colour."
Vasari's account was confirmed and amplified in the next century by
Baldinucci, who says that he has seen many drawings by Finiguerra much
in the manner of Masaccio; adding that Maso was beaten by Pollaiuolo in
competition for the reliefs of the great silver altar-table commission
by the merchants' gild for the baptistery of St John (this famous work
is now preserved in the Opera del Duomo). But the paragraph of Vasari
which has chiefly held the attention of posterity is that in which he
gives this craftsman the credit of having been the first to print off
impressions from niello plates on sulphur casts and afterwards on sheets
of paper, and of having followed up this invention by engraving
copper-plates for the express purpose of printing impressions from them,
and thus became the inventor and father of the art of engraving in
general. Finiguerra, adds Vasari, was succeeded in the practice of
engraving at Florence by a goldsmith called Baccio Baldini, who, not
having much invention of his own, borrowed his designs from other
artists and especially from Botticelli. In the last years of the 18th
century Vasari's account of Finiguerra's invention was held to have
received a decisive and startling confirmation under the following
circumstances. There was in the baptistery at Florence (now in the
Bargello) a beautiful 15th-century niello pax of the Coronation of the
Virgin. The Abate Gori, a savant and connoisseur of the mid-century, had
claimed this conjecturally for the work of Finiguerra; a later and still
more enthusiastic virtuoso, the Abate Zani, discovered first, in the
collection of Count Seratti at Leghorn, a sulphur cast from the very
same niello (this cast is now in the British Museum), and then, in the
National library at Paris, a paper impression corresponding to both.
Here, then, he proclaimed, was the actual material first-fruit of
Finiguerra's invention and proof positive of Vasari's accuracy.
Zani's famous discovery, though still accepted in popular art histories
and museum guides, is now discredited among serious students. For one
thing, it has been proved that the art of printing from engraved
copper-plates had been known in Germany, and probably in Italy also, for
years before the date of Finiguerra's alleged invention. For another,
Maso's pax for the baptistery, if Cellini is to be trusted, represented
not a Coronation of the Virgin but a Crucifixion. In the next place, its
recorded weight does not at all agree with that of the pax claimed by
Gori and Zani to be his. Again, and perhaps this is the strongest
argument of any, all authentic records agree in representing Finiguerra
as a close associate in art and business of Antonio Pollaiuolo. Now
nothing is more marked than the special style of Pollaiuolo and his
group; and nothing is more unlike it than the style of the Coronation
pax, the designer of which must obviously have been trained in quite a
different school, namely that of Filippo Lippi. So this seductive
identification has to be abandoned, and we have to look elsewhere for
traces of the real work of Finiguerra. The only fully authenticated
specimens which exist are the above-mentioned tarsia figures, over half
life-size, executed from his cartoons for the sacristy of the duomo. But
his hand has lately been conjecturally recognized in a number of other
things: first in a set of drawings of the school of Pollaiuolo at the
Uffizi, some of which are actually inscribed "Maso Finiguerra" in a
17th-century writing, probably that of Baldinucci himself; and secondly
in a very curious and important book of nearly a hundred drawings by the
same hand, acquired in 1888 for the British Museum. The Florence series
depicts for the most part figures of the studio and the street, to all
appearance members of the artist's own family and workshop, drawn direct
from life. The museum volume, on the other hand, is a picture-chronicle,
drawn from imagination, and representing parallel figures of sacred and
profane history, in a chronological series from the Creation to Julius
Caesar, dressed and accoutred with inordinate richness according to the
quaint pictures which Tuscan popular fancy in the mid-15th century
conjured up to itself of the ancient world. Except for the differences
naturally resulting from the difference of subject, and that the one
series are done from life and the other from imagination, the technical
style and handling of the two are identical and betray unmistakably a
common origin. Both can be dated with certainty, from their style,
costumes, &c., within a few years of 1460. Both agree strictly with the
accounts of Finiguerra's drawings left us by Vasari and Baldinucci, and
disagree in no respect with the character of the inlaid figures of the
sacristy. That the draughtsman was a goldsmith is proved on every page of
the picture-chronicle by his skill and extravagant delight in the
ornamental parts of design--chased and jewelled cups, helmets, shields,
breastplates, scabbards and the like,--as well as by the symmetrical
metallic forms into which he instinctively conventionalizes plants and
flowers. That he was probably also an engraver in niello appears from the
fact that figures from the Uffizi series of drawings are repeated among
the rare anonymous Florentine niello prints of the time (the chief
collection of which, formerly belonging to the marquis of Salamanca, is
now in the cabinet of M. Edmond de Rothschild in Paris). That he was
furthermore an engraver on copper seems certain from the fact that the
general style and many particular figures and features of the British
Museum chronicle drawings are exactly repeated in some of those primitive
15th-century Florentine prints which used to be catalogued loosely under
the names of Baldini or Botticelli, but have of late years been classed
more cautiously as anonymous prints in the "fine manner" (in
contradistinction to another contemporary group of prints in the "broad
manner"). The fine-manner group of primitive Florentine engravings itself
falls into two divisions, one more archaic, more vigorous and original
than the other, and consisting for the most part of larger and more
important prints. It is this division which the drawings of the Chronicle
series most closely resemble; so closely as almost to compel the
conclusion that drawings and engravings are by the same hand. The later
division of fine-manner prints represent a certain degree of technical
advance from the earlier, and are softer in style, with elements of more
classic grace and playfulness; their motives moreover are seldom
original, but are borrowed from various sources, some from German
engravings, some from Botticelli or a designer closely akin to him, some
from the pages of the British Museum Chronicle-book itself, with a
certain softening and attenuating of their rugged spirit; as though the
book, after the death of the original draughtsman-engraver, had remained
in his workshop and continued to be used by his successors. We thus find
ourselves in presence of a draughtsman of the school of Pollaiuolo, some
of whose drawings bear an ancient attribution to Finiguerra, while all
agree with what is otherwise known of him, and one or two are exactly
repeated in extant works of niello, the craft which was peculiarly his
own; others being intimately related to the earliest or all but the
earliest works of Florentine engraving, the kindred craft which tradition
avers him to have practised, and which Vasari erroneously believed him to
have invented. Surely, it has been confidently argued, this draughtsman
must be no other than the true Finiguerra himself. The argument has not
yet been universally accepted, but neither has any competent criticism
appeared to shake it; so that it may be regarded for the present as
holding the field.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--See Bandinelli in Bottari, _Raccolta di lettere_
(1754), i. p. 75; Vasari (ed. Milanesi), i. p. 209, iii. p. 206;
Benvenuto Cellini, _I Trattati dell' orificeria_, &c. (ed. Lemonnier),
pp. 7, 12, 13, 14; Baldinucci, _Notizie dei professori di disegno_
(1845), i. pp. 518, 519, 533; Zani, _Materiali per servire_, &c.
(1802); Duchesne, _Essai sur les nielles_ (1824); Dutuit, _Manuel de
l'amateur d'estampes_, vol. i. pref. and vol. ii.; and for a full
discussion of the whole question, with quotations from earlier
authorities and reproductions of the works discussed, Sidney Colvin,
_A Florentine Picture Chronicle_ (1898). (S. C.)
FINISHING. The term _finishing_, as specially applied in the textile
industries, embraces the process or processes to which bleached, dyed or
printed fabrics of any description are subjected, with the object of
imparting a characteristic appearance to the surface of the fabric, or
of influencing its handle or feel. Strictly speaking, certain operations
might be classed under this heading which are conducted previous to
bleaching, dyeing, &c; e.g. mercerizing (q.v.), stretching and crabbing,
singeing (see BLEACHING); but as these are not undertaken by the
finisher, only those will be dealt with here which are not mentioned
under other headings. By the various treatments to which the fabric is
subjected in finishing, it is often so altered in appearance that it is
impossible to recognize in it the same material that came from the loom
or from the bleacher or dyer. On the other hand, one and the same
fabric, subjected to different processes of finishing, may be made to
represent totally different classes of material. In other cases,
however, the appearance of the finished article differs but slightly
from that of the piece on leaving the loom.
All processes of finishing are purely mechanical in character, and the
most important of them depend upon the fact that in their ordinary
condition (i.e. containing their normal amount of moisture), or better
still in a damp state, the textile fibres are plastic, and consequently
yield to pressure or tension, ultimately assuming the shape imparted to
them. The old-fashioned box press, formerly largely used for household
linen, owed its efficacy to this principle. At elevated temperatures the
damp fibres become very much more plastic than at the ordinary
temperature, the simplest form of finishing appliance based on this fact
being the ordinary flat iron. Indeed it may safely be stated that most
of the modern finishing processes have been evolved from the household
operations of washing (milling), brushing, starching, mangling, ironing
and pressing.
_Cotton Pieces._--In the ordinary process of bleaching, cotton goods are
subjected during the various operations to more or less continual
longitudinal tension, and while becoming elongated, shrink more or less
considerably in width. In order to bring them back to their original
width, they are stretched or "stentered" by means of specially
constructed machines. The most effective of these is the so-called
stentering frame, which consists essentially of two slightly diverging
endless chains carrying clips or pins which hold the piece in position
as it traverses the machine. The length of a frame may vary from 20 to
30 yds. On the upper part of the frame the chains run in slots, and by
means of set screws the distance between the two chains can be set
within the required limits. The pieces are fed on to one end of the
machine in the damp state by hand and are then naturally slack. But
before they have travelled many yards they become taut, the stretching
increasing as they travel along. Simultaneously with the stretching, the
pieces are dried by a current of hot air which is blown through from
below, so that on arriving at the end of the machine they are not only
stretched to the required degree but are also dry. The machine used for
stentering is more fully described under MERCERIZING (q.v.). In case the
goods come straight from the loom to be finished, stentering is not
necessary.
Pieces intended to receive a "pure" finish pass on without further
treatment to the ordinary finishing processes such as calendering, hot
pressing, raising, &c. But in the majority of cases they are previously
impregnated, according to the finish desired, with stiffening or
softening agents, weighting materials, &c. Usually, starch constitutes
the main stiffening agent, with additions of china clay, barium
compounds, &c., for weighting purposes, and Turkey red oil, with or
without the addition of some vegetable oil or fat, as the softening
agent. Magnesium sulphate is also largely used in order to give "body"
to the cloth, which it does by virtue of its property of crystallizing
in fine felted needle-shaped crystals throughout the mass of the fabric.
When starch is used in filling, it is advisable to add some anti-septic,
such as zinc chloride, sodium silicofluoride, phenol or salicylic acid,
in order to prevent or retard subsequent development of mildew. The
impregnation of the pieces with the filling is effected in two ways,
viz. either throughout the thickness of the cloth or on one surface only
(back starching). When the whole piece is to be impregnated the
operation is conducted in a starching mangle, which is similar in
construction to an ordinary household mangle, though naturally larger
and more elaborate in construction. The pieces run at full width through
a trough situated immediately below the bowls and containing the filling
(starch paste, &c.), then between the bowls, the pressure ("nip") of
which regulates the amount of filling taken up, and thence over a range
of steam-heated drying cylinders (see BLEACHING). In case one side only
of the goods is to be stiffened--and this is usually necessary in the
case of printed goods,--a so-called back-starching mangle is employed.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Principle of Back-Starching Machine.]
The construction of the machine varies, but the simplest form consists
essentially of a wooden bowl a (Fig. 1) which runs in the starch paste
contained in trough t. The pieces pass from the batch-roller B,
through scrimp rails S and over the bowl under tension, touching the
surface from which they gather the starch paste. By means of the fixed
"doctor" blade d, which extends across the piece, the paste is
levelled on the surface of the fabric and excess scraped off, falling
back into the trough. The goods are then dried with the face side to
the cylinders.
Some goods come into the market with no further treatment after
starching other than running through a mangle with a little softening
and then drying, but in the great majority of cases they are subjected
to further operations.
_Damping._--When deprived of their natural moisture by drying on the
cylinder drying machine, cotton goods are not in a fit condition to
undergo the subsequent operations of calendering, beetling, &c., since
the fibres in the dry state have lost their plasticity. The pieces are
consequently damped to the desired degree, and this is usually effected
in a damping machine in passing through which they meet with a fine
spray of water.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Principle of Damping Machine.]
A simple and effective device for this purpose is shown in section in
Fig. 2. It consists essentially of a brass roller r running in water
contained in a trough or box t. Touching the brass roller is a brush
roller b which revolves at a high speed, thus spraying the water,
which it takes up continuously from the wet revolving brass roller in
all directions, and consequently also against the piece which passes
in a stretched condition over the top of the box, being drawn from the
batch roller B, over scrimp rails S, and batched again on the other
side on roller R. The level of the water in the trough is kept
constant.
_Calendering._--The calender may be regarded as an elaboration of the
ordinary mangle, from which, however, it differs essentially inasmuch as
one or more of the rollers or bowls are made of steel or iron and can be
treated either by gas or steam; the other bowls are made of compressed
cotton or paper. Three distinct forms of calender are in use, viz. the
ordinary calender, the friction calender and the embossing calender.
The number of bowls in an ordinary calender varies between two and six
according to the character of the finish for which it is intended. In a
modern five-bowl calender the bottom bowl is made of cast iron, the
second of compressed cotton or paper, the third of iron being hollow and
fitted with steam heating apparatus. The fourth bowl is made of
compressed cotton, and the fifth of cast iron. The pieces are simply
passed through for "swissing," i.e. for the production of an ordinary
plain finish. The same calender may also be used for "chasing," in which
two pieces are passed through, face to face, in order to produce an
imitation linen finish. Moire or "watered" effects are produced in a
similar way, but these effects are frequently imitated in the embossing
calender.
The friction calender, the object of which is to produce a high gloss on
the fabric, differs from the ordinary calender inasmuch as one of the
bowls is caused to revolve at a greater speed than the others. In an
ordinary three-bowl friction calender the bottom bowl is made of cast
iron, the middle one of compressed cotton or paper, and the top one (the
friction bowl) of highly polished chilled iron. The last-named bowl,
which has a greater peripheral speed than the others, is hollow and can
be heated either by steam or gas.
The embossing calender is usually constructed of two bowls, one of which
is of steel and the other of compressed cotton or paper. The steel
roller, which is hollow and can be heated either by steam or gas, is
engraved with the pattern which it is desired to impart to the piece. If
the pattern is deep, as is the case in the production of book cloths, it
is necessary to run the machine empty under pressure until the pattern
of the steel bowl has impressed itself into the cotton or paper bowls,
but if the effect desired only consists of very fine lines, this is not
necessary; for instance, in the production of the Schreiner finish,
which is intended to give the pieces (especially after mercerizing) the
appearance of silk, the steel roller is engraved with fine diagonal
lines which are so close together (about 250 to the in.) as to be
undistinguishable by the naked eye.
_Beetling_ is a process by which a peculiar linen-like appearance and a
leathery feel or handle are imparted to cotton fabrics, the process
being also employed for improving the appearance of linen goods. For the
best class of beetle finish, the pieces are first impregnated with sago
starch and the other necessary ingredients (softening, &c.) and are
dried on cylinders. They are then damped on a water mangle, and beamed
on to the heavy iron bowl of the beetling machine.
A beetling machine of the kind, with four sets of "fallers," is shown
in Fig. 3. The fallers are made of beech wood, are about 8 ft. long,
5-1/2 in. deep and 4 in. wide, and are kept in their vertical position
by two pairs of guide rails. Each faller is provided with a tappet or
wooden peg driven in at one side, which engages with the teeth or
"wipers" of the revolving shaft in the front of the machine. The
effect of this mechanism is to lift the faller a distance of about 13
in. and then let it drop on to the cloth wound on the beam. This
lifting and dropping of the fallers on to the beam takes place in
rhythmical and rapid succession. To ensure even treatment the beam
turns slowly round and also has a to-and-fro movement imparted to it.
The treatment may last, according to the finish which it is desired to
obtain, from one to sixty hours.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Beetling Machine (Edmeston & Sons).]
Beetling was originally used for linen goods, but to-day is almost
entirely applied to cotton for the production of so-called _linenettes_.
_Hot-pressing_ is used to a limited extent in order to obtain a soft
finish on cotton goods, but as this operation is more used for wool, it
will be described below.
_Raising._--This operation, which was formerly only used for woollen
goods (teasing), has come largely into use for cotton pieces, partly in
consequence of the introduction of the direct cotton colours by which
the cotton is dyed evenly throughout (see DYEING), and partly in
consequence of new and improved machinery having been devised for the
purpose. Starting with a plain bleached, dyed or printed fabric, the
process consists in principle in raising or drawing out the ends of
individual fibres from the body of the cloth, so as to produce a nap or
soft woolly surface on the face.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Raising.]
This is effected by passing the fabric slowly round a large drum D,
which is surrounded, as shown in the diagram, (Fig. 4), by a number of
small cylinders or rollers, r, covered with steel wire brushes or
"carding," such as is used in carding engines (see COTTON-SPINNING
MACHINERY).
The rollers r, which are all driven by one and the same belt (not
shown in the figure), revolve at a high rate of speed, and can be made
to do so either in the same direction as that followed by the piece as
it travels through the machine or in the opposite one. In addition to
their revolving round their own axes, the raising rollers may be
either kept stationary or may be moved round the drum D in either
direction.
In the more modern machines there are two sets of raising rollers, of
which each alternate one is caused to revolve in the direction
followed by the piece, while the other is made to revolve in the
opposite direction. By passing through an arrangement of this kind
several times, or through several such machines in succession, the
ends of the fibres are gradually drawn out to the desired extent.
After raising, the pieces are sheared (for better class work) in order
to produce greater regularity in the length of the nap. The raised style
of finishing is used chiefly for the production of uniformly white or
coloured flannelettes but is also used for such as are dyed in the yarn,
and to a limited extent for printed fabrics.
_Woollen and Worsted Pieces._--Although both of these classes of
material are made from wool, their treatment in finishing differs so
materially that it is necessary to deal with them separately. _Unions_
or fabrics consisting of a cotton warp with a worsted weft are in
general treated like worsteds.
In the finishing of woollen pieces the most important operation is that
of _milling_, which consists in subjecting the pieces to mechanical
friction, usually in an alkaline medium (soap or soap and soda) but
sometimes in an acid (sulphuric acid) medium, in order to bring about
felting and consequent "fulling" of the fabric. This felting of the wool
is due to the peculiar structure of the fibre, the scales of which all
protrude in one direction, so that the individual fibres can slip past
each other in one direction more readily than in the opposite one and
thus become more and more interlocked as the milling proceeds. If the
pieces contain _burrs_ these are usually removed by a process known as
"carbonizing," which generally, but not necessarily, precedes the
milling. Their removal depends upon the fact that the burrs, which
consist in the main of cellulose, are disintegrated at elevated
temperatures by dilute mineral acids. The pieces are run through
sulphuric acid of from 4 deg. to 6 deg. Tw., squeezed or
hydro-extracted, and dried over cylinders and then in stoves. The acid
is thus concentrated and attacks the burrs, which fall to dust, while
leaving the wool intact. For the removal of the acid the fabric is first
washed in water and then in weak soda. Carbonizing is also sometimes
used for worsteds.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Milling Stocks.]
Milling was formerly all done in milling or fulling stocks (see Fig. 5),
in which the cloth saturated with a strong solution of soap (with or
without other additions such as stale urine, potash, fuller's earth,
&c.) is subjected to the action of heavy wooden hammers, which are
raised by the cams attached to the wheel (E) on the revolving shaft, and
fall with their own weight on to the bundles of cloth. The shape of the
hammer-head causes the cloth to turn slowly in the cavity in which the
milling takes place. Occasionally, the cloth is taken out, straightened,
washed if necessary, and then returned to the stocks to undergo further
treatment, the process being continued until the material is uniformly
shrunk or milled to the desired degree.
In the more modern forms of milling machines the principle adopted is to
draw the pieces in rope form, saturated with soap solution and sewn
together end to end so as to form an endless band, between two or more
rollers, on leaving which they are forced down a closed trough ending in
an aperture the size of which can be varied, but which in any case is
sufficiently small to cause a certain amount of force to be necessary to
push the pieces through. A machine of this kind is shown in Fig. 6. It
is evident that for coloured goods which have to be milled only such
colouring matters must be chosen for dyeing that are absolutely fast to
soap.
[Illustration: From Ganswindt, _Technologie der Appretur_.