to the spectator. Again, the savage knows that
an animal has two sides; both, he thinks, should be
represented, but he cannot foreshorten, and he finds
the profile view easiest to draw. To satisfy
his need of realism he draws a beast’s head
full-face, and gives to the one head two bodies drawn
in profile. Examples of this are frequent in
very archaic Greek gems and gold work, and Mr. A.
S. Murray suggests (as I understand him) that the attitude
of the two famous lions, which guarded vainly Agamemnon’s
gate at Mycenae, is derived from the archaic double-bodied
and single-headed beast of savage realism. Very
good examples of these oddities may be found in the
‘Journal of the Hellenic Society,’ 1881,
pl. xv. Here are double-bodied and single headed
birds, monsters, and sphinxes. We engrave (Fig.
15) three Greek gems from the islands as examples
of savagery in early Greek art. In the oblong
gem the archers are rather below the Red Indian standard
of design. The hunter figured in the first gem
is almost up to the Bushman mark. In his dress
ethnologists will recognise an arrangement now common
among the natives of New Caledonia. In the third
gem the woman between two swans may be Leda, or she
may represent Leto in Delos. Observe the amazing
rudeness of the design, and note the modern waist
and crinoline. The artists who engraved these
gems on hard stone had, of necessity, much better
tools than any savages possess, but their art was
truly savage. To discover how Greek art climbed
in a couple of centuries from this coarse and childish
work to the grace of the AEgina marbles, and thence
to the absolute freedom and perfect unapproachable
beauty of the work of Phidias, is one of the most singular
problems in the history of art. Greece learned
something, no doubt, from her early knowledge of the
arts the priests of Assyria and Egypt had elaborated
in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile.
That might account for a swift progress from savage
to formal and hieratic art; but whence sprang the
inspiration which led her so swiftly on to art that
is perfectly free, natural, and god-like? It
is a mystery of race, and of a divine gift.
‘The heavenly gods have given it to mortals.’
[Fig. 15. Archaic Greek Gems: 303.jpg]
Footnotes:
{3a} Compare De Cara: Essame Critico, xx. i.
{3b} Revue de l’Hist. des Rel. ii. 136.
{4} Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, p. 431.
{5} Prim. Cult. i. 394.
{11a} A study of the contemporary stone age in Scotland
will be found in Mitchell’s Past and Present.
{11b} About twenty years ago, the widow of an Irish
farmer, in Derry, killed her deceased husband’s
horse. When remonstrated with by her landlord,
she said, ’Would you have my man go about on
foot in the next world?’ She was quite in the
savage intellectual stage.
{12} At the solemn festival suppers, ordained for
the honour of the gods, they forget not to serve up
certain dishes of young whelp’s flesh.
(Pliny, H. N. xxix. 4.)