History of Ancient Art Part 15

The Isthmian Euphranor had changed the scene of his labors, and, at the same time, the centre of the entire school, to Athens, which continued to be the artistic metropolis for his scholars and successors. Among the latter, Nikias is especially celebrated--340 to 300 B.C. He devoted his attention chiefly to feminine beauty, somewhat influenced, perhaps, by his older contemporary Praxiteles, in connection with whom he is mentioned. His taste was for extensive compositions, surprising for their novelty of conception, and, like Parrhasios, he endeavored to give roundness to his figures. The lack in the Theban-Attic school of that individuality which existed in the Sikyonian was completely overcome by Euphranor, and gave place to a more universal aim. He and Nikias were artists whose tone came less from their school than from their own personal convictions. They early learned to understand technical and artistic acquisitions of all kinds, and to carry them forward independently. We may conceive them as holding the same loose relations towards their teachers which existed between the Sikyonian master Pamphilos and their contemporary Apelles.

Apelles was destined to bear away the palm from all his predecessors and successors. Although three cities--Colophon, Ephesos, and Cos--claimed the honor of calling him their own, it is reasonably certain that the first was the place of his birth, the second that where his labors commenced, and the third may not improbably have been that of his death.

The Ephesian Euphoros is named as his first teacher, but his fame dates from the time when he left the academy of Pamphilos for that of Sikyon.

Perhaps the fact that Pamphilos was a Macedonian by birth may have paved the way for Apelles to the royal court at Pella, whence he appears to have returned to Ephesos among the followers of Alexander the Great. He seems never to have founded a permanent school; at least, we gather from cla.s.sical notices that he worked transiently at Athens, Corinth, Rhodes, and even in Alexandria. We learn also that he outlived, by a considerable time, his great patron Alexander. His works are to be divided into three groups--paintings of G.o.ds and heroes, allegories, and portraits; these were also sometimes combined. At the head of the first group stands the Aphrodite Anadyomene, one of the most celebrated pictures of antiquity. It was transferred to Augustus for the remission of one hundred talents of taxes; by him carried to Rome and placed in Caesar's Temple of Venus, where it became so much injured--thus obtaining the sobriquet Monocmenon, one-legged--that Nero had it taken away and replaced by a copy. She was represented as the "sea-born," nude, and pressing with her hands her dripping hair. Far from being an ideal figure, it was rather patterned after the celebrated courtesans of the time, two of whom are named--Pancaste, or Pancaspe, the paramour of Alexander, who afterwards presented her to the artist himself; and Cratine, or Phryne, mistress of Apelles, who may have been the more direct model for the Venus, as, at the festival of Poseidon at Eleusis, she bathed, naked, in the sea before the eyes of the a.s.semblage. A second Aphrodite, in which Apelles hoped to surpa.s.s the first, remained unfinished at his death. Of these representations the first was certainly without any devotional or even ethic character; but the Artemis, in the Sacrifice of the Virgins, was something more than a genre piece with a mythological motive; and his heroes, who, according to Pliny, challenged nature itself, were more than mere stately portraits.

The Heracles may be regarded as a study. Charis and Tyche were allegories, the latter having been represented sitting "because happiness does not stand fast." The most celebrated of them all, Calumny, is minutely described by Lucian. It portrayed a man, whose inclination to credit evil reports was characterized by large ears, sitting between two women, Ignorance and Mistrust, and receiving Calumny, a magnificent woman excited with pa.s.sion, preceded by Envy; she drags in a youth by the hair, who vainly, with hands uplifted, calls the G.o.ds to witness. Behind the train advances Repentance, a mourning female figure in black, looking back with pain and shame upon the tardy appearance of Truth. Similar in character is the picture of the chained war demon, belonging partly to the group of portraits. A third allegory, of little intrinsic worth, is set forth with great artistic ability--Bronte, Astrape, and Keraun.o.bolia--thunder, with the flash and stroke of lightning.

Among the portraits, allegorical in nature, was the famous picture in which Alexander, with lightning in his right hand, was represented as Jupiter. The monarch himself was so well pleased with this that he said there were two Alexanders--one the unconquered son of Philip, the other the inimitable creation of Apelles. But little is known of the king's portraits, whether equestrian, in triumphal chariots, or surrounded by deities and allegorical figures; nor of those of Philip and his generals, of the tragic actor Gorgosthenes of Habron, nor of that of the artist himself.

If Apelles be scrutinized more closely in order to make clear the chief characteristics by which he won such brilliant renown, it will be found that it was not in composition. In this, as in treatment of perspective, he gave precedence to his fellow-pupils Melanthios and Asclepiodoros.

That he was aware of this weakness, and avoided occasion for manifesting it, is shown by the fact that most of his paintings contained few figures. When more appeared, instead of being picturesquely grouped and treated, they were ranged in rows, almost like reliefs, better suited to the allegorical subjects so prevalent with Apelles, and so common in his time, than to mythological and historical representations. Though allegory may, in great measure, be unfavorable to true art, because, as Winckelmann says, it forces the painter "to tint his brush with reason,"

still that of Apelles has lately been too much depreciated. The Calumny has been p.r.o.nounced an error of fancy, rough symbolism, and an inharmonious a.s.semblage of persons and personifications. But these were the legitimate materials of the artist, and he succeeded, at least, in the representation of character and in truthfulness of drawing. The lightning group was something more than a piece of technical bravura.

Who would prize the picture less because thunder and lightning were represented instead of Zeus, a deity who would have been attempted by no painter of antiquity, or, indeed, of later times? Though his motive may have been purely intellectual, the painter remained the same, whether he portrayed a Ca.s.sandra or a Diabole--whether he more or less displayed his astounding mastery. Apelles will be more rightly judged if he be treated as a painter rather than an artist; as such we recognize in him a technical and many-sided perfection. Different accounts speak of him as rapid and sure in drawing, his lines being not only correct, but in the highest degree characteristic. The maxim of Apelles "No day without a line"--that is, without exercise in drawing--has become a proverb, if not quite in its original sense. Through this incessant practice his hand acquired such sureness that it followed the will implicitly, and made possible even the hair-splitting execution related in an anecdote which has been unjustly discredited by critics. Apelles entered one day the workshop of Protogenes, in the absence of the latter, and made known his visit by drawing a line upon a tablet at hand with such swing and surety, such purity and smoothness, that the Rhodian master, upon his return, recognized the hand of Apelles. In order to show himself equal, Protogenes split the line by a second one in a different color, but acknowledged himself defeated when Apelles divided this through its entire length by a third. An evidence of the sharpness and certainty of his characterization with simple lines is given in the story of a servant who had injured him, and whom Apelles, though he had seen him only once, so sketched with charcoal upon the wall that the likeness was recognized by King Ptolemy after the first strokes. It will readily be understood that such capacity must have fitted the artist especially for portraiture; and his portraits attained such striking likeness and truthfulness that a physiognomist a.s.sumed to be able, by them, to discern not only the exact age of the subject, but even the time of his future death. No further testimony is needed than the Anadyomene to prove that his works were perfect in correctness and expression as well as in beauty.

The employment of color had fully kept pace with this matchless drawing, though Apelles seems to have been limited to painting in distemper, without the use of encaustic. The softened glazings are particularly mentioned, which made the unbroken light all the more brilliant. In the portrait of Alexander, the hand, outstretched with the lightning, appeared to stand quite out from the panel, a result perhaps equally owing to masterly foreshortening in the drawing. The beauty of his color was noted, and especially its vigor; the fame of the Aphrodite cannot be understood without the former, nor that of the Alexander and the Lightning without the latter. This many-sided, technical perfectness, unattained before Apelles, and in which Pliny says that he excelled all other painters together, may have had its germ in the school of Pamphilos, as the Sikyonians devoted especial attention to artistic execution. To these eminent qualities, however, were added the intrinsic merits of the master himself, upon which he laid the greatest stress, and which he ascribed to that charm understood by the Greeks in the word _charis_. That this was chiefly to be found in the just measure of completeness was explained by Apelles when he declared himself to have been surpa.s.sed by Protogenes in all but the knowledge of the right moment to lay aside the brush, without which this charm, through overmuch care, is lost.

By this technical mastery, clearness of characterization and grace, Apelles so delighted all who saw his works that, according to the numerous anecdotes that ill.u.s.trate his position, he was the most popular artist of all antiquity. In face of such authority, it would be unjust to see in him, as some have done, the beginnings of the decline of art.

Though his artistic efforts may not have equalled those of Polygnotos, because he could more easily satisfy the ethical demands of his time, still it must be acknowledged that, as a painter, he surpa.s.sed him as far as, in sculpture, Praxiteles surpa.s.sed Calamis and the other predecessors of Pheidias. But in Pheidias a high ideal was united to an absolute perfection of execution which, in painting, Polygnotos was far from having attained. "In the history of painting," says Brunn, "each of these two fields has its separate point of greatest elevation; the fame, therefore, which, in sculpture, undoubtedly raised Pheidias above all others, appeared, in painting, divided between Polygnotos and Apelles."

Protogenes of Caunos, or rather, with reference to his work, of Rhodes, was a rival of Apelles. He seems to have been self-taught, or, at least, to have been the pupil of an entirely obscure master. The admiration of Apelles for Protogenes was so great that he expressed a desire to buy up his works and publish them as his own; but numerous anecdotes show that Apelles was in the way of bestowing his flattery upon every great and celebrated man. Protogenes is said to have painted over his Ialysos four times, the better to secure it from destruction, so that, on the peeling of the outer layer of pigment, the surface below might present the same color. But this can only be a foolish legend, invented to ill.u.s.trate his extreme care. Similar tales of a later time reported him to have worked upon the Ialysos seven or eleven years, and to have fed upon nothing but lupines, for fear that luxury might blunt the acuteness of his senses.

Perhaps this means that the painter's genius was not recognized until late in life, up to which time he had lived in great poverty. Of his picture in the Propylaea at Athens, representing Paralos and Hammonias--personifications of Athenian s.h.i.+ps--there is an equally idle story that he did not paint the s.h.i.+ps themselves because, until his fifteenth year, he had earned his bread as a s.h.i.+p-painter.

In Protogenes we may conceive a perfection such as only the most unwearied care could attain. This perfection was neither in the ideas nor in the composition; for the subjects of his pictures, known to us as heroic or historical portraits, or, at most, as groups of few persons without action, were in themselves far less important than those of Apelles. But the illusive effect must have been complete if, as Petronius says, one could not look even at the sketches without a feeling of awe on account of their truthfulness to nature. This carefulness extended even to the smallest accessories, like the wonder of the partridge at the reclining satyr, and the foam on the mouth of the dog in the Ialysos; an effect which, it is said, was at last accomplished by the pressure--not the throwing--of a sponge. Yet the wearisomeness of this perfection was not to be denied, and here, in the eyes of Apelles, lay the weakness of this master.

The relations of Apelles with another rival, the Egyptian Antiphilos, were not so friendly. The great celebrity of this painter rested upon a peculiarity directly contrary to that of Protogenes, designated by Quintilian as facility; that is, a freshness and genial security of conception and treatment in everything which his brush touched. His range of subjects exceeded that of Protogenes, or even of Apelles; for he painted with equal excellence pictures of the deities, mythological scenes, portraits, genre pieces, such as the Wool-comber and the Boy Blowing the Fire; and even caricatures, such as that of Gryllos, with a face reminding one of the significance of his own name--the Porker; whence it comes that all caricatures were, in antiquity, called Grylli.

That he was fond of startling effects of light is evident from the Boy Blowing the Fire, the glow of which was reflected upon his face; also from his renowned satyr Aposcopeuon--the Gazer--whose glance the s.h.i.+elding hand seemed at once to intensify and to conceal.

Aetion, according to Brunn, also belongs to the group of artists contemporary with Apelles. His importance can be measured only by the esteem of antiquity, and by the minute descriptions of one of his pictures. This represented the marriage of Alexander and Roxana; the latter, sitting modestly upon a couch, is served by Cupids, who take the veil from her head and loosen her sandals. The king, accompanied by Hephaistion as attendant, with torches, is led towards the bride by an Eros; two more, panting under the weight of the shaft, bear the lance of the conqueror, while others carry by the handles a s.h.i.+eld; and one Cupid, who has crept into a coat of mail, seems, from his hiding-place, to lie in wait for those about to pa.s.s. It is not strange that this composition, so charming in the description of Lucian, should have led modern painters to attempt to reproduce it; as in the frescos of Raphael in the Borghese Gallery, and those of Razzi in the Farnesina.

Among other masters of the time of Alexander were the Athenian Asclepiodoros, of whom we know little more than that Apelles gave him the preference in composition; and Theon of Samos, whose works degenerated into an attempt to secure a theatrical rather than a natural effect. Besides tragic scenes, like the murder of his mother by Orestes, and the blinding of the singer Thamyris, this is shown in the heavily armed warrior called by Quintilian his masterpiece--a man in the violence of attack with a drawn sword. To increase the theatrical effect, this picture was exhibited by the artist accompanied with the flourish of trumpets. If we here bear in mind the so-called Borghese warrior of Agasias--that sculptural cousin of the Hoplite--we cannot mistake the spirit of a time which, after the inner significance had perished, clung entirely to the external, and, renouncing truthfulness in composition, which here would have demanded a group, was satisfied with a theatrical sham. The farthest remove from the conceptions of Polygnotos had now been reached.

h.e.l.lenism, by which is meant the civilization of the period after Alexander, when the Grecian kingdom had become cosmopolitan, satisfied its artistic requirements by a repet.i.tion of what the previous centuries had produced. The attempt was made, in sculpture and in painting, to combine results already won, generally in a shallow eclecticism. Of the numerous painters in that decorative period few names have been handed down. The most was accomplished by the masters of Sikyon where the tradition of the energetic school of Pamphilos was not yet lost.

Protogenes in Rhodes, and Antiphilos in Egypt, also had some followers who were not quite without fame. Timomachos of Byzantion, at least, was equal to his great predecessors of the time of Alexander. His Medea was purchased by Caesar for eighty talents, and his other works are not less praised; among them one, perhaps historical, showing two men in conversation, and the Gorgo, may be connected with an event related by Herodotos (v. 51). If, as we are told, there was a Medea represented before the murder of her children, in a struggle between hatred of her husband and motherly love--a subject treated in a Pompeian wall-painting in the museum at Naples; an Ajax, after his fury, meditating suicide; and an Iphigeneia in Tauris, perhaps recognizing her brother, we may conclude that Timomachos had returned to the pathetic element, and that he united with it, so far as possible, the technical perfection of the Alexandrian period. It is possible that the painter stood in the same artistic relation to the sculptors Pasiteles, Stephanos, and Menelaos as did Theon to Agasias.

After Parrhasios, side by side with the grander style had developed a species of cabinet-painting which seems to have been devoted especially to obscene subjects (p.o.r.nographia). Already in the time of Alexander, pictures of a small size were much in favor; besides the Egyptian Antiphilos already mentioned as celebrated in this direction, Callicles and Calates worked in it exclusively, and Peiraeicos had great fame as a painter of this kind. His subjects were not of a lewd nature, but were taken from the lower ranks of life, such as booths of barbers and cobblers, donkeys, eatables, etc.; by which one is reminded of the genre pieces and still-life paintings of the Netherlands. p.o.r.nographia was thus changed to Rhopographia, painting of small wares. In later times the term employed for obscene painting seems to have been Rhyparographia.

This trivial painting naturally continued to be prevalent in the periods of the Diadochi and the Romans, since art, when reduced to mere decoration, cultivated by preference graceful and lively subjects. It was extended even to the floors, for which mosaic had been used as early as the time of the royal court of Pergamon. If the decoration of walls is based upon tapestry, as Semper has made evident, this is especially the case with colored floors. The effect of mosaic, in which form painting now took possession of the pavement, differed little from that of weaving and embroidery. Sosos was considered as the oldest and most celebrated master of this process, perhaps because he first carried it beyond simple patterns. He represented, in the so-called "unswept hall"

at Pergamon, remnants of food, fruit-rinds, etc., as if scattered upon the floor; also a dove drinking from a sh.e.l.l. The celebrity of these works makes it natural that several repet.i.tions of the dove should have been found. It seems, however, that the practice of this art was not in extensive use before the time of the Roman empire, when it spread over all the floors, as painting did over all the walls. The mosaics in the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which are composed of rough pebbles, may, however, be even more ancient than the works of Sosos in Pergamon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 246.--The Campana Tomb at Veii.]

ETRURIA.

At the time when h.e.l.lenic influence had developed to its fullest extent in Magna Graecia, the Etruscans had long pa.s.sed their highest point of perfection. Roman tradition gives no little significance to their civilization, in its artistic as well as in its political aspects, though it was far less grand and brilliant than that of their neighbors in the south of the Italian peninsula. But as Rome rose, Etruria fell; and in the time of the Peloponnesian war it had but a shadow of its former dominant position in Italy.

Whether this people were related to the ancient Greeks, or merely mixed with the Pelasgic and h.e.l.lenic element through emigration from the western coasts of Greece, it is certain that the older culture of the nation shows a great resemblance to that of the countries beyond the Adriatic. This may have been owing partly to common Oriental prototypes, and to native imitation of these, and partly to the fact that certain primitive results of civilization, under like material premises, naturally a.s.sume a more or less similar form without any real historical connection.

The method of building the Etruscan walls is particularly a case in point. The resemblance of these to the most ancient fortifications of Greece makes possible, though it does not establish, an intimate communication between the two races, to which also the use of Greek letters for the strange Etruscan language certainly points. The so-called Cyclopean jointing, however, presents itself in every civilized land where rock is found which naturally breaks in polygonal forms. So also square-stone masonry early appears wherever the material, quarried without difficulty in rectangular forms, favors this more satisfactory method. Besides both these varieties, the Etruscans made use of bricks, as shown by the foundations of the walls of Veii, which above-ground are mainly built of cut stone. These are at least as ancient as the time of the later kings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 247.--Gate of Falerii.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 248.--Ca.n.a.l of the Marta.]

Some of the remaining ruins of Etruria, and of Central Italy--for the peculiar civilization of that region is not strictly confined to the limits of the Etruscan language--show in the building of gates a new technical element. It has been seen how the Greeks in vain sought a subst.i.tute for the arch, to them an inadmissible, if not an unattainable, feature; and exhausted every conceivable method of horizontal stone-laying in order to cover their gateways. Similar evasive attempts are not wanting in Etruria; the Cyclopean walls, especially, present portal constructions similar to those of Mykenae. But through the perfection of stone-cutting, and building with rectangular blocks, the ceiling of the pa.s.sage by means of the arch was early attained. That this step was taken before the invasion of the Gauls is shown by the still remaining Gate of Falerii (_Fig._ 247), which city, as is well known, lost its importance under Camillus. It is not certain whence the people of Central Italy attained their knowledge of the arch.

Though it had been familiar to the a.s.syrians as early as the ninth century B.C., it is possible that they made this important discovery independently, perhaps somewhat later than the Mesopotamians. The vault of the Cloaca Maxima in Rome dates from the sixth century B.C., but it shows, even at this early period, a perfection which gives evidence of long previous use. Ca.n.a.l-building was one of the first conditions of existence on the western coast of Central Italy, where the drainage of the swamps--the neglect of which, since the Middle Ages, has reduced the once populous Maremma to a pestilential desert--the discharge of the mountain lakes, which otherwise overflow from time to time, desolating the lower country, and the regulation of the river-courses, alone made possible the settlement of a people and the founding of flouris.h.i.+ng cities west of the Apennines. It is therefore not improbable that the great ca.n.a.l discovered by Dennis, which once drained the swampy Valley of the Marta, preceded the Cloaca Maxima, and, indeed, antedated the Roman period altogether. (_Fig._ 248.) The enormous stones employed in its construction, and its great extent, display, even in this primitive age, that marked inclination for works of general usefulness which distinguished the people of Italy above all others of antiquity.

Of the long-forgotten cities, discovered in the present century by their walls, little else remains than extensive cemeteries, which, as repeatedly happens among the ruined places of the earth, have outlasted by more than two thousand years the dwellings of the living. The streets and buildings of these settlements, already in ruins under the Romans, have disappeared almost without a trace; while the monuments of the dead are so well preserved as frequently to give information concerning even the domestic architecture of their builders. By far the greater number of the tombs were tumuli, conical hills of earth, which generally, as in Lydia, were elevated upon a low cylinder and reveted by an outer course of stone. These have now almost all been reduced to the appearance of natural mounds. Their dimensions in some instances are almost as great as those of the smaller Egyptian pyramids. The base of the monument at Poggio Gajella, near Chiusi, formerly falsely held to be the tomb of Porsena, measures 256 m. in its circ.u.mference, while that at Monteroni, between Rome and Civita Vecchia, is 195 m. These gigantic foundations at times bore several cones. This appears to have been the case with the so-called tomb of Cuc.u.mella at Vulci, where two tall tower-like elevations still remain, which doubtless served as substructures for the terminating piers. The cippus may be imagined to have been a.n.a.logous to the upper members of the tombs in Lydia, or, perhaps, to have resembled a pear-shaped capital, like the fragment found near the ruins of the so-called tomb of Pythagoras, or the imitations upon terra-cotta reliefs--similar to the cone which so generally terminated Roman tholos roofs. When several cones were placed upon one base, the angle of elevation was made steeper, as may probably have been the case with the tomb of Porsena at Clusium, the description of which is given by Pliny (x.x.xvi. 3) after Varro. If the tombs called those of the Horatii and Curiatii at Albano, which display many Etruscan reminiscences, be compared with this account, it is possible to present a restoration of the structure, correct in at least its princ.i.p.al aspects. Upon the corners of the triply stepped, diminis.h.i.+ng substructure stood twelve cones, the thirteenth being in the centre of the upper terrace. (_Fig._ 249.)

The fundamental idea of the Etruscan tombs was not alone the creation of a monument which, covering the remains and protecting them from desecration, should plainly mark the place of interment, but the survivors sought, at the same time, to provide a room in which the dead might dwell in a manner corresponding to their circ.u.mstances during life. This conception was foreign to the Greeks, who seldom employed burial chambers of great size; but it was prevalent among the Egyptians, Persians, Lycians, and other nations of antiquity, though not by them carried out so logically as by the Etruscans, who usually placed the bodies upon stone benches, shaped like a bed, as if sleeping.

Sarcophagi, when existing at all, appear to have been added upon further use of the sepulchre. It is thus, for instance, with the tomb of Veii--of which _Fig._ 246, at the head of this section, gives an inner view--with the tomb called that of Regulini-Gala.s.si at Caere, and with numerous other sepulchres discovered in various cemeteries, notably of Southern Etruria. There, however, the chambers have mostly proved to have been plundered in former centuries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 249.--Restored Plan and Elevation of the Tomb of Porsena.]

The dwelling-rooms represented are as diverse as those of the living must naturally have been. No great width of these s.p.a.ces was possible, because of the imposed weight of the tumulus; and the apartments consequently became narrow pa.s.sages, ceiled by stone lintels, by blocks leaning against each other as a gable, or by the gradual approach of the horizontal courses by the projection of each over that beneath it.

Examples of all these methods are provided by the tombs of Alsium, the present Monteroni; and the before-mentioned Regulini-Gala.s.si tomb of Caere, the present Cervetri. The latter, so called after its discoverers, has furnished numerous treasures to the Etruscan Museum of the Vatican; it consisted of a corridor separated by a wall into compartments, with rock-cut lateral chambers of oval plan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 250.--Ceiling of a Tomb at Cervetri.]

When the burial-chamber was a grotto--that is to say, was wholly excavated from the native rock--a greater width could be obtained. The ceiling was then carved, either to the outline of a low vault, as in the Campana tomb at Veii, or, more commonly, in imitation of the beams of a wooden ceiling. In the latter case various forms appear; for small inner chambers a simple horizontal ceiling sufficed, and a simple cross-timbering, overlaid with boards, was chosen as a pattern. The s.p.a.cious vestibules frequently have an inclined roof, when ridge-beams, rafters, and the slats laid upon them are carefully and truthfully imitated. (_Fig._ 250.) A noteworthy example at Corneto (_Fig._ 255) shows in its outer room a plain imitation of the Italian atrium, or court, of the kind termed by Vitruvius _cavaedia displuviata_. It is roofed by four main beams, laid diagonally and inclined outward, which support the framework of a middle orifice for light and air, and shed the water without instead of within. From this instance it appears that the fundamental idea of the chief sepulchral chamber was the atrium, which was the common gathering-place of the Italian house, as was the peristyle of the Greek; while the inner chambers represented the various rooms.

This imitation of an Etruscan dwelling--a remarkable counterpart, in architectural respects, to the copies of the exterior of wooden houses in the Lycian rock-cut tombs--was further carried out by a corresponding ornamentation of the rooms. The couches hewn from the rock, upon which the bodies rested, were at times a close imitation of cus.h.i.+ons and pillows; the supports beneath were sculptured like bedsteads, while stone easy-chairs and footstools stood near to increase the apparent comfort. The apertures in the wall which separates the two s.p.a.ces are reproductions of the framework of doors and windows. (_Fig._ 251.) The sides of the chambers are stuccoed with plaster of Paris, and covered with cheerful paintings, ill.u.s.trating feasts, dances, sacred festivals, and games. Every conceivable variety of household utensils hang upon the walls or stand leaning against them, with great numbers of the well-known painted vases and other works of pottery. These objects, when not provided in reality, are imitated in stucco-relief and brilliantly painted, as in a tomb at Cervetri (_Fig._ 252), where walls and piers are covered with the representations of familiar household articles and weapons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 251.--Plan and Section of a Tomb at Cervetri.]

Although the tumuli were the more common funeral monuments, there were parts of Etruria, among the Apennines, where the limited extent of the level ground offered no s.p.a.cious cemetery for the mounds, and where rocky mountains and abrupt cliffs led to a different form of sepulchre.

A facade was cut upon the background provided by nature, where the appearance of a dwelling could be imitated with little expenditure of labor. The most numerous examples of these fronts are in the cemeteries of Castel d'a.s.so, near Viterbo. The forms are plain, and not particularly characteristic; a blind niche, the only architectural feature of the lower surface, was subst.i.tuted for a door, the real entrance being through an insignificant shaft beneath the earth; and the facade was terminated by a complicated cornice--a confused ma.s.s of roundlets, cyma-mouldings, and rectangular bands, almost without projection. A stairway was often cut upon one or both sides of the tomb, leading to a platform or to other sepulchres situated upon a higher level.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 252.--Interior of a Tomb at Cervetri.]

More remarkable than these monuments at Castel d'a.s.so are the rock-cut facades of Norchia, to the west of Viterbo, upon which are imitated the fronts of temples. The four columns or pilasters, now destroyed, were placed wide apart, according to the proportions of the Tuscan order.

The entablature consists of a narrow epistyle and a frieze decorated with clumsy triglyphs, or rather diglyphs, with pointed trunnels under the regula, above which follows a weak cornice with dentils. The gable is still more peculiar. Its outer ends curl into a volute, with a Gorgoneion in its centre, which originally served as a base for the acroteria; the triangle is filled with reliefs. The whole front gives the impression of a barbarous mixture of indigenous elements with Grecian forms, ill understood and roughly rendered. (_Fig._ 253.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 253.--Temple Tomb at Norchia.]

These remains are interesting, but elements seem to have crept in which could not originally have belonged to the Etruscan style, and the facades of Norchia can hence be deemed of but secondary importance in the study of the temple structures. The plan of these was quite different from that of the Doric temple. Instead of the length being at least double the width of the front, as in Greece, the breadth was here to the length as five to six. The cella did not form a centre around which stood the columns, but it entirely occupied the rear half of the area, while the front remained open as a columned porch. Three cellas, with the images of nearly related deities, were usually grouped together, the middle one being the largest, and also of the greatest hieratic importance. In some instances rows of columns were ranged upon the two long sides of a cella; but the rear wall was always bare. All artistic effect was here abandoned, and the building was, on this account, often so placed as to abut immediately against an enclosing rampart, or against a natural cliff.

The plan and general arrangement were thus entirely different from those of the Greek temple. But the same thing is by no means to be said in regard to the architectural details and members of the building. The Etruscan column was closely allied to the Doric, and greatly resembled it, in spite of some marked variations arising from the lingering influence of the original timbered construction, and the inferior perception of artistic proportions. The Etruscan shaft, in contrast to the Doric, had a base consisting of a circular plinth and a tore, both of equal height. The capital was formed of three parts, equally high, of which the two upper, the echinos and abacus, were similar to the Doric.

The third beneath--the necking of the column--which, in the Greek prototype, was divided from the shaft only by slight incisions or an apophyge, was in this separated by a roundlet; what in Greek architecture was based upon technical necessities, in Etruria became an unmeaning decoration. The shaft, apparently not channelled, rose in a lightness akin to the Ionic, tapering to three quarters of its lower diameter, and reached a height of seven diameters. The unusually wide distance between the columns--seven times the lower diameter of the shaft--in contrast to that in the intercolumniation of the Doric style, which rarely equalled two diameters, had its origin in the light wooden beams, which did not require such frequent and powerful supports as did the stone epistyle of the Greeks.

The entablature consisted of wooden epistyle beams placed one over another, fastened together by iron clamps, in at least two courses. From the text of Vitruvius--from whom the entire description must be taken, since, on account of the wooden beams, there are no remains of Etruscan temples--we cannot learn whether these smooth layers took the place of both architrave and frieze, or whether the upper member resembled the Doric frieze with triglyphs. From a remark of this writer, the former appears more probable, as many epistyle timbers being fastened one above another as the size of the building seemed to require; moreover, notwithstanding the h.e.l.lenic influence, triglyphs were not always introduced into the Roman Tuscan order. The arrangement of the roof rafters was doubtless such that their support upon the beams of the epistyle beneath was hidden, and perhaps rendered more solid by mortising or dovetailing. Upon the longer sides the roof projected considerably, fully one quarter of the height of the columns. By this means the size of the gable was decidedly increased. These gables may have been decorated with sculptural ornament in the tympanon, of clay or bronze, and with acroteria, as may be gathered from several notices, as well as from the rock-tombs of Norchia. Concerning these decorations Vitruvius is silent; but they could not have altered the heavy, low, and clumsy character of which he complains, and which is apparent in the restorations that have been made according to his theory. (_Fig._ 254.) The Etruscan temple could not become really monumental so long as it retained the wooden construction in its most essential const.i.tuents, and this seems never to have been given up in the entablature, even when the direct Grecian influence first made itself felt among the Romans. How this ultimately changed the fundamental architectural forms of Central Italy will be explained in the section upon Roman building, which united the traditions of Etruscan and h.e.l.lenic art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 254.--Elevation of the Etruscan Temple according to Vitruvius.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 255.--Tomb at Corneto.]