Greek bronzes

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II Archaic Etruscan Statuettes

It is not many years ago yet since all archaic bronze statuettes were regarded as Etruscan. Most of them that were to be seen in museums had been found in Etruria, or at all events in Italy, while as to the few which had unquestionably come from Greece, the answer might have been heard, that they must have been imported into Greece from Etruria. An ancient authority 1 told that the Etruscan sculptors’ work (signa Tuscanica) had found its way everywhere. In Greek literature the references were many that testified to the admiration in which Etruscan metal work, such as candelabra, vases, and armour, were held by the Greeks.' There the question stood. Nothing more was to be said till the time came for active exploration in Greece itself. One excavation after another brought to light numbers of archaic bronze statuettes, till at last it began to be asked whether, in fact, not a few of the archaic bronzes found in Etruria itself had not been imported there from Greece. That was turning the tables with a vengeance. A lively division of opinion ensued : either the Etruscans had no artistic originality, and were mere imitators of the Greeks ; or they had distinct artistic gifts of their own, while subject to the influence of the contemporary Greeks. In these circumstances, the first thing we have to do is, to learn to discriminate such

2 As regards candelabra, see Athenaios, x v. 700, rts twv \v\veuov 1) i^yaala : T vpprjvcKyj, and compare ibid. i. 28*, where a Greek poet, assigning to various nationalities the particular thing for which each was most famous, as, for instance, the Phoenicians for the invention of letters, the Carians for their ships, and the Athenians for their pottery, awards to the Etruscans supremacy in all kinds of bronze work useful and ornamental in a house.

differences of style and execution as distinguish the archaic Etruscan from the contemporary archaic Greek statuettes.

We begin with two specimens which will serve to illustrate the archaic Greek manner of rendering nude male figures, and at the same time show us what sort of progress was made within the archaic period itself. In each of these figures it will be observed that the principal aim of the artist was to secure accuracy in the bodily forms from the point of view of an observer, by whom each detail was regarded as almost a separate entity. As a consequence the particularising of bodily forms, which ought to be of secondary effect, such as the structure of the bones, inevitably led to a formal, almost conventional, manner of rendering them, which had a certain beauty of its own, such as will be seen in the first figure (Fig. 6).

In the second figure (Fig. 7) there is a marked change. The anatomical forms are strongly expressed, even more strongly, in fact, than they ought to be, but formality and conventionalism had largely given way under a new impulse to express, if possible, something of the inner force of organic human life. It must have been just about this time that the Greek sculptor Antenor appeared upon the scene — he who made for the Athenians a bronze group of the Tyrannicides,

Harmodios and Aristogeiton, in the act of slaying the tyrant Hipparchos in the streets of Athens.

We are told that during the brief period when the Persian king, Xerxes, held possession of Athens, he carried off that group, that subsequently a copy of it was made by two sculptors working conjointly, and that finally, after the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great, the original group was restored to Athens. After its restoration this group was copied in works of minor art, as on coins and painted vases, apparently from mere joy at the fact of its restoration. By themselves these copies have little worth, but they have enabled archaeologists to identify two marble statues in the museum of Naples as more or less faithful copies of the original group.

Fig. 6.

Archaic Greek Bronze.

British Museum.

These statues are known from ancient copies, and as regards one of them we may very confidently say that no better comparison for it could be found than our bronze statuette. The type of head is different to some degree, and the action of the figure is not quite the same.

Fig. 7. — Archaic Greek Bronze. British Museum.

Yet in both figures we have a striking similarity even in conception, still more in the rendering of the bodily forms. There can be no doubt for a moment that our bronze belongs to exactly the period at which Anterior made his famous group of the two Tyrannicides. It tells precisely the same story of the first efforts of Athenian sculptors to break away from the conventionalisms of older times and to seek gradually a new sphere in the rendering of an inner organic vitality. No one can say that Antenor was the first to strike out on this new path. Others of his contemporaries may equally have been searching in the same direction. That is quite possible. But we have to remember also that the task assigned him in making a group of the two Tyrannicides was one which could not but have stirred in him a deep and strong emotion. The children in the streets of Athens were then singing a rude ballad of how Harmodios and Aristogeiton, concealing their daggers in branches of myrtle as they marched in public procession, found an opportunity of stabbing to the heart the man who had not only wronged them personally, but was an evil to the state. How deeply the people were moved by the event may be gathered from the song of the children, which has survived till now. In such circumstances, the sculptor, who accepted a public commission to celebrate that first great step towards freedom, would naturally be in full sympathy with the popular movement, and likely to strain every fibre of his being towards infusing into his group something of the new life of freedom which had just dawned on Athens.

In the last stage of archaic art, the conventionalisms and vigour, both of them very assertive in the first and second stages, give place to an idealising of the bodily forms which in the next generation was to lead to the school of Fheidias. Simplicity and largeness of manner are diffused through the several principal divisions of the figure, but not through the figure as a whole. That last touch was still wanting, as in Pygmalion’s statue, before the goddess had breathed life into it. It is curious how the Greeks delighted to fable the breathing of life into statues. Another instance was that of Pandora, a statue turned alive by the breath of Athene. Again it was Athene, the goddess of handicraft and intelligence, who gave life to the figure of a man made by Prometheus. And we perceive something of the same turn of thought when we read of statues by Daidalos having to be fastened lest they should run away. These stories were the invention of a primitive legend-making age. Yet somehow they impress us as if the art instincts of the Greeks had from the beginning observed that a statue, however accurate externally, must have part of the sculptor’s own life within it.

Let us now take three Etruscan statuettes of a corresponding date, and more or less akin in subject. The first (Fig. 8), which is also the most archaic of them, represents a nude male figure carrying a calf on his shoulder. It is a type with which we are familiar in archaic Greek sculpture from a marble statue on the Acropolis of Athens. A more common variant shows us a ram instead of a calf. Sometimes the figure is expressly indicated as the god Hermes, in which case we recognise him as Hermes Criophoros or ram -bearer, a character in which he is said to have once appeared mysteriously in the town of Tanagra at a

time of pestilence, with the result that the plague ceased, to commemorate which happy issue the sculptor Calamis was employed to make a statue of the god as a Criophoros.

There is no doubt, however, that the artistic type of a man carrying a calf or ram on his shoulders had been familiar long before in Greek sculpture, and there is equally, I think, no doubt that the Etruscan who made our statuette had derived his idea from the Greeks. But he had not derived more than the general idea. He has no sense of proportion such as the Greek of that time possessed. He exaggerates not only the size of the calf but the effect of its weight in pressing downwards the head of the figure.

Neither of these things is to be seen in the contemporary Greek statue on the Acropolis of Athens. In the face of the bronze much attention is given to minute details, as if it were there — in the face — principally that the key to the action was to be found. Consistently with this view everything is eliminated from the bodily forms which was not absolutely necessary to convey the general impression.

We may now take a more advanced specimen (Fig. 9) — a figure of Heracles which was found in the Lake of Falterona in Etruria along with a number of highly interesting bronzes now in the Museum. It will be seen that it is almost a direct challenge to the second of our Greek statuettes, each in its way being an exhibition of how robust the human figure may be. But a moment’s comparison will show that the robustness of the Etruscan

Fig. 8.

Archaic Etruscan Statuette.

Man carrying a Calf.

British Museum.

I ■ statuette has been attained to a large extent by the sacrifice of exactness and precision in the details of the bodily forms and by an extraordinary degree of exaggeration. The sculptor was not ignorant of the archaic rules and conventions of his time in regard to proportions and the defining of the separate parts of the human form. We can see that all over the figure. But he could not resist the impulse towards forcible and exaggerated expression, such as is seen perhaps most plainly in the gigantic knot into which the lion’s skin is fastened on the breast of Heracles. The body is thrust forward as if swelling with life. The head is turned violently to the side, the features much exaggerated. The whole figure is an instance of breaking away from traditional canons of art without being able as yet to substitute another but equally inflexible set of rules.

A more agreeable effect is produced by our third figure (Fig. 10) — a young man holding in his hand a sword, the blade of which has been broken off. In his limbs and bodily forms there is a youthful sensitiveness which recalls the Greeks of the best days. But having got over this first impression, we cannot disguise the fact that his arms are in size out of all proportion, that the chlamys is fastened round his neck with a studied effect quite foreign to the Greek spirit, and that the face is animated to an exceptional extent. In the face, the hair, and the drapery, which last presents an agreeable contrast to the nude forms, there

Fig.

-Etruscan Heracles . British Museum.

is much to be admired over and above the general attractions of the bronze. Yet after all there remains something essentially Etruscan in the figure, and that something is exaggeration.

We have not yet considered what an ordinary draped female figure looked like in the archaic age of Greece. Let us take as an example a bronze statuette in the British Museum which stands on its ancient pedestal and wants nothing but the right hand (Plate I.). Most probably that hand had held a flower. There was much of exquisiteness among the Greek women of those days. Satisfied with their own beauty and the perfection of their dress, they liked to dally with a flower in the hand as if a flower were obviously the one thing best suited for them. Our statuette ranges admirably with the series of archaic marble statues on the Acropolis of Athens — the same dress with its multitude of fine folds relieved by richly ornamented borders, and above all the same modest satisfaction as regards dress and demeanour. If our bronze differs from them, the difference lies chiefly in its more advanced type of face. The expression of selfconsciousness in the marble statues has given way to a larger and more ideal conception in the bronze.

Our next step is to find an Etruscan statuette of about the same period, and presenting much the same opportunities for the treatment of drapery and for the general expression. In the example before us (Fig. 1 1 ) it will be observed that the drapery, as in the Greek statuette, consists of two garments, an under chiton which shows on the breast and right shoulder, as also at the feet, and an upper himation which envelops the figure, passing over the left shoulder. But the folds of this upper himation are indicated with much greater freedom and greater attention to natural effect than in the Greek bronze, which very probably is due to the influence of a somewhat later stage of art. The massive fold which runs diagonally from the left shoulder across the body is quite different in form from anything in Greek sculpture. For one thing it is much ruder, and for another the pattern of circles incised upon it appears on the outside of the fold at one part and on the inside at another. Similarly, where the inner edge of the himation is turned outwards beside the right arm the same pattern again appears as if the himation had been enriched with an identical border both inside and out. That is what the Greeks never did ; and certainly no Greek would ever have destroyed the massive diagonal fold across the body with an ornamental pattern, for the very simple reason that it is a large fold and not a border.

Fig. 10. — Archaic Etruscan Bronze. British Museum.

On the archaic marble statues of the Acropolis we frequently see a crown on the head richly decorated with painted floral patterns. It is a crown identical in shape with that of the Etruscan statuette, but instead of standing out conspicuously, not to say boastfully, as in the Etruscan bronze, it is invariably kept down to the most modest and unobtrusive dimensions. That was not to the Etruscan taste. Their love of conspicuousness is seen also in the massive necklace of the bronze and particularly in the intensified features of the face. Yet we are bound to acknowledge that in this figure the workmanship is often excellent. But for an innate habit of exaggeration, the sculptor might perhaps have stood side by side with the Greeks of his day.

The problem which we stated at the beginning, and have thus far endeavoured to illustrate by contemporary examples from Greece and from Etruria, is one that cannot be solved from the statuettes alone. We must look farther afield. We must allow, for instance, that there were some things that the Etruscans could do almost as well as the Greeks in the archaic age ; one was the engraving of gems, and another the production of gold jewellery. On the other hand, there were things where they failed badly, and there is one branch of the minor arts in which their failure is very easily demonstrated — the painting of vases. Every one knows that most of the Greek vases in our museums have been found in Etruscan tombs. They had been imported from Greece by wealthy Etruscans, and it is a testimony to the good taste of these Etruscans that they chose the very finest specimens they could get hold of. Their own workmen were by no means ignorant of the technical processes in use in the making of vases. Yet somehow their attempts to imitate the Greeks are melancholy failures. That is surely a reproach to a people renowned for their skill in terra-cotta work. One speculates in vain as to the cause. It is not enough to remember how the love of beautiful painted vases had distinguished the Greeks from the highly civilised nations of the East, and to assume that this same distinguishing quality was likely to hold good also as against the nations of the West such as the Etruscans, because we know how the Etruscans admired and coveted these products of Greek genius, and how direct and intimate were their relations with the Greeks. There must have been some radical difference in the artistic instincts of the two peoples.

One would suppose that the faculty of incising designs on bronze was practically the same as drawing with a fine brush on a terra-cotta vase. In each case success depends entirely on beauty of line. Is it not, therefore, strange that the Etruscans, who had shrunk from the attempt at vase-painting, should have devoted themselves to an extraordinary extent to the production of incised drawings on bronze? The explanation may lie partly in this, that it is one thing to execute a drawing on a flat even surface, such as the bronze mirrors and cistae of the Etruscans, and a much more difficult thing to accommodate a drawing to a surface which curves both vertically and horizontally, as is the case with many of the Greek vases. Very probably it was to escape this difficulty that the Etruscans abandoned the painting of vases and threw their energies into drawing on flat bronze surfaces instead, leaving us a vast series of such

Fig. 11. — Archaic Etruscan Statuette. British Museum.

drawings out of all comparison with the few specimens which have survived from the Greeks.

We must remember that the Etruscans were never successful in working with the brush on a small scale. In archaic times they could paint very well on a large scale, as the frescoes testify which still survive on the walls of their tombs. Then again it may be argued that having acquired, by means of their skill in bronze-work, a success which had extended even to Greece, they would naturally not care to profit by the example of the Greek vases further than was suitable for their own special craft. For example, on the Greek vases the finest drawing occurs on the circular kylikes, where the curving surfaces of the exterior present the greatest possible difficulties for the draughtsman. The best of the Greek vase-painters revelled in covering these surfaces with drawings of singular beauty. Whether an Etruscan would have ever succeeded in translating drawing of that kind to a bronze vase of the same shape is a question we need not discuss. On the other hand, these Greek kylikes have in the interior a circular space which contains a drawing of one or more figures. This was exactly what the Etruscan required for his circular bronze mirrors, and it is here that a comparison ought to be made between him and the Greek vase-painter, each on his own ground. I do not say that the result would indicate a very extensive indebtedness of the Etruscans to the Greeks, but it would confirm the view just set forth that they had in their own way profited by the vase-painting of the Greeks.

Here are two of their archaic mirrors with incised designs ; the one (Fig. 12) is a youth, with widespread wings to his shoulders and wings to his shoes, moving with great strides, and carrying a lyre in one hand. One might say, here is instance of pure Greek drawing, so finely conceived is this youthful figure, so essentially Greek his action of holding up a flower. His body outlined against the background of the spreading wings, and these wings elaborately delineated as a foil to the simple lines of the body, the face of a large, full type — these are characteristics singularly Greek. Yet the drawing is Etruscan. For instance, one cannot imagine a Greek leaving out the lines which should have indicated the bones of the chest, and indeed almost the whole of the inner markings proper to a figure in this movement. Yet these lines have been purposely omitted for the sake of a particular effect of contrast with the wings. Again, one cannot believe that a Greek would ever have reconciled himself to so specially decorative a treatment of the wings, whereas that is just one of those things that fit in with the tendency towards exaggeration which we saw in the Etruscan statuettes. The movement of the figure, the spreading of the wings, and the winged shoes would be suitable for the Greek hero Perseus, such as

Fig. iz. — Etruscan Mirror. British Museum.

we see him on archaic Greek vases, and it is possible that so far the figure has been based on Perseus. But apart from the identification of the figure on the mirror, I think we have already seen enough to recognise in it a striking combination of the influence of Greek drawing and Etruscan individuality.

On the other mirror (Fig. 13), the central figure is again one of those much-winged beings of archaic art — Greek as well as Etruscan. The

peculiarity in this instance is that the wings spring from her waist and not

c

Fig. 13. — Archaic Etruscan Mirror. British Museum.

yet the series of long narrow folds formed thereby is quite attractive in its way. It is a curious action, that of the left hand raised over the shoulder to take hold of, or receive, something which the boy behind her appears to hold up. It is curious, because of its representing an action still going on, in contrast to the completed action shown in the holding of the skirt, the position of the wings, and the general attitude of the figure. I have from the shoulders, which is perhaps just as natural, and may be regarded as a variant on those archaic Greek figures where the wings spring from the chest. The wings on her shoes are much exaggerated in size. Equally exaggerated is the action of holding out the skirt with the right hand, and spoken of a boy standing behind her. It is, however, possible that this and the other figure in front are not boys, but men represented on a diminutive scale, as was usual, among the Greeks at least, when they wished to indicate mortals in presence of a deity. Of that there is an abundance of examples on the Greek reliefs, and this is the more likely to be the true interpretation because the raising of the arms of the two diminutive figures is peculiarly the action of adorantes or suppliants. The myrtle branch which one of them holds is also appropriate to a suppliant. The central figure would then be a goddess, and as such a being of commanding stature. The conception is quite in accord with the religious feelings of the Greeks, and no doubt it was from them that the Etruscan artist got his inspiration. Figures bearing a strong general resemblance both to the goddess and to the suppliants are to be found on contemporary Greek vases. But on the vases there is always an entire absence- of that element of exaggeration which we associate with the individuality of the Etruscans, and find in the mirror before us. The Etruscans took a special pride in their shoes. If they wore nothing else they had always their shoes on, in contrast to the bare-footedness which the Greeks loved. The two suppliants wear the usual pointed shoes and nothing else. I suppose we may take it as a mere slip of the engraver that there is no sign of drapery on the body of the goddess. We cannot suppose that her dress begins only at the waist, nor that the upper part of it had been omitted for the sake of some effect of contrast between nude and draped forms. Or it that was the case, then the idea was certainly not borrowed from the Greeks.

It is very exceptional to find a bronze mirror with a relief sculptured in the back, as in Fig. 14, instead of the usual incised design. Possibly the idea had been to combine on the mirror itself the relief which more properly belonged to the case. A Greek would hardly have thought of such a thing. Again, the subject in this instance is clearly derived from the well-known Greek conception of Peleus carrying off Thetis. But the Etruscan artist has changed Peleus into Heracles and inscribed the name of Heracles beside him. But apart from this licence, we must allow that he runs the archaic Greek sculptors very close in his treatment of bas-relief as suitable to a small bronze mirror, with its flatness of surfaces and rich flow of lines.

As early as the seventh century b.c. the Etruscans were celebrated for their work in terra-cotta.1 Even in Rome the old temples were full of such works by them, and when in the course of time the Romans lost taste for these simple archaic terra-cotta statues, they did not escape the rebuke of Cato,2 who told them that they might well be content with what had pleased their ancestors. On the outsides of the temples were cornices richly decorated with antefixa; modelled in terra-cotta, such as may be seen among the remains of an archaic Tuscan temple in the Museum. The pediments were surmounted by figures or groups, as was the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol with its chariot of four horses raised on the highest point. That was the famous terra-cotta quadriga which the Romans had captured at Veii at the close of their ten years’ siege.

In Greece there was in early times a similar centre of terra-cotta sculpture in the town of Corinth. The Corinthians were an enterprising as well as an artistic people. Their enterprise called their ships westward along the Gulf of Corinth. They planted a colony in Corfu, and they

were concerned in the early settlements of Greeks as far west as Sicily and Magna Graxia. It is easy to imagine that their intercourse had extended also to Etruria. But there is no need to imagine this if we accept as a Get the ancient tradition that in the seventh century b.c. certain artist modellers in terra-cotta from Corinth had settled among the Etruscans, and had there introduced their art (Pliny, xxxv. 152). There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this tradition, or to assume that it had been invented by the Greeks as a sort of claim of superiority or precedence on their part over the Etruscans, because the story is not told primarily in connection with these artists. They only come in incidentally as having accompanied in his exile from Corinth Damaratos from whom descended Tarquin, the King of Rome. Artists do not usually expatriate themselves among barbarians. When they leave their home they look forward to some favourable opportunity of cultivating their art and prospering in it, and on that principle we may fairly suppose that these Corinthian workers in terra-cotta had been aware before they started that in Etruria they would find their particular branch of art already being practised and received with favour.

2 Livy, xxxiv. 4, 4.

Fig. 14. — Bronze Etruscan Mirror with relief: Heracles carrying off a Woman Archaic — Sixth Century B.C. British Museum.

In relating this tradition of the Corinthian artists, Pliny adds that in the opinion of some the art of modelling had been practised long before that time in the island of Samos, which lies close to the western coast of Asia Minor. At present there is every reason to accept this ancient belief as we founded. Every year brings fresh evidence in its favour.

We cannot any longer overlook a belief prevalent among the Etruscans themselves that their ancestors had originally come from Asia Minor. In support of that belief we may adduce this strong bent of theirs towards sculpture in terra-cotta. But the most we can be quite confident about is that in early historical times Corinth had stood in close relationship with Samos and Asia Minor in the East and with Etruria in the West, that Corinth had learned much of the art of working in terra-cotta from Asia Minor, and had passed this knowledge on to the Etruscans. For the present it must remain only a possibility that the artistic instincts of the Etruscans had come to them from an original community of race with the Greeks of Asia Minor, and that the aptness with which in later times they helped themselves to all they wanted from the art of Greece proper, was due also to that same community of origin. I think this is the view which will more and more assert itself in regard to the Etruscans as an artistic people.

Towards the end of the seventh century b.c. the history of Asia Minor is fascinating in the highest degree. New forms of verse and song burst into being. The arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture were never richer or more varied. How intense had been the artistic activity of these times may be gathered from the splendid poetic remains of Archilochus, Sappho, Alcaeus, to take only the best names. The discoveries of recent years are beginning to enable us to realise what we had only heard of in tradition, that the first great home of Greek painting had been in Asia Minor. In sculpture of the archaic period we are fortunately rich, and in architecture we can already judge — for example, from the remains of the archaic temple at Ephesus — how beautifully varied and luxuriant had been the details of the old Ionic temples in their original home. How different those columns with their sculptured bases, their capitals varying as if no two ought to be strictly alike, their elaborately carved neckings, and in short the apparently interminable variety of details under a general similarity of aspect — how different all this opulence of forms from the Ionic temples of Greece proper with their precision of details and their passionate search after an established rule as to what was the most beautiful. In vase-painting, where so much of the charm depended on refinements of drawing and so little comparatively on grandeur of conception or splendour of effect, it is remarkable that in Asia Minor as yet hardly a trace of that art has been discovered. Compare with this the fact that most of the great painters from Polygnotos to Apelles were natives of Asia Minor, and largely practised their art there.