Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/364

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344 ARCHEOLOGY [CLASSICAL account of their historical value, the study of them should be classed under philology. A similar question has been raised regarding topography. (See Conze, Ueber die fiedeu- tung der dassischen Archdologie, Wien, 1869 ; Preller, Ausgewdhlte Aufsdtze, pp. 384-425, uber die wissenschaft- liche Behandlung d-er Archdologie ; Stark, in the Pldlologus, s.iv. p. G45, and xvi. p. 85.) The material for the study of classical art consists of literary records and actual remains, among the former being included, though from another point of view be longing to the latter class, the inscriptions which have been found incised on sctilptures, or more frequently on the bases left behind in Greece as worthless by the plunder ing Romans. The literary records have been collected by Overbeck, Aniike Schriftquellen, Leipzig, 1868, and the inscriptions alone more recently by Hirschfeld, Tituli Statuarlorum Sculptorumque, Berlin, 1871. The actual remains may be arranged under the three classes of archi tecture, sculpture, and painting, with the first mentioned being included the industrial arts, in which principles of construction were applied, e.g., the furniture of temples and dwelling-houses, as opposed to the imitative arts. In the case of architecture proper, owing to the immovable nature of its monuments, dependence has to be placed on the trustworthiness of drawings and descriptions made on the spot by travellers. Sculpture, on the other hand, being comparatively easy of transport in all cases, and having been for centuries the object of extraordinary avidity among cultivated people, is now fairly represented in all its important stages in any one of the principal museums of Europe. Painting, in its highest sphere, may be said to exist only in the record supplied by the occasional statements of ancient writers. But these statements em body the opinions of those whose judgment in regard to sculpture we have the means of verifying, and unless there were reason to suppose that persons accustomed to exact the greatest refinement in sculpture were lightly gratified in the matter of painting, their desultory remarks will furnish some idea of the ancient manner for which the remains of Avail painting at Pompeii will serve as a founda tion, though apparently executed by workmen rather than artists, and that at a time when the art had sunk to its lowest ebb. The skill in drawing attained by ordinary workmen is amp]y displayed in the painted vases. Without attempting to subject the history of art to systematic study, the Greeks and Romans nevertheless devoted much attention to special branches of it. The fruits of their labours have in great part perished; but from what remains, and from the notices of what is lost, it appears that their researches took the direction either of explaining the principles of art, and especially those of architecture, or of collecting facts concerning artists and their Avorks, or of describing the works of art which existed in this or that place, as in a catalogue. Of the first class of works AVC have lost all and they Avere many except Vitruvius. Of the second the losses are knoAvn to have been great, and, poor though the substitute for them undoubtedly is, we are still fortunate in possessing such in the notices collected by Pliny in his Ilistoria Naturalis. We have besides a long series of epigrams, for AA 7 hich there was no dearth of point, in the works of well-knoAvn artists. For a similar purpose the rhetoricians chose frequently to draAV comparisons from or to describe works of art; but owing to the object they had in viev, they have left little that is of much practical good for the history of ancient art. The same applies to the epigrammatists. (See 0. Benn- dorf, De Anthologize Grcecce Epigrammatis quce ad artes spectant, Bonn, 1862.) With regard to Pliny, it seems that, though himself destitute of all critical faculty in mutters of art, he frequently drew his notices from excellent authorities. The third class of ancient Avritcrs on works of art were the Periegetu;, of Avhom only Pausanias surviA ^s (A.D. 160-180), his EAAaSos Ilepir/y^o-ts, in ten books, being of the highest value from an antiquarian point of view. For the criticism of art it brings little benefit. As to the fate of Avorks of art during the early centuries of Christianity, the first record we possess is that of Nicetas Acominatus, of Chonse in Phrygia, who died in 121G (Narralw de Statiiis Antiquis qucis Franci post captam r anno 1204, Constantinopolim destruxerunt, Leipzig, 1830). In 14 GO Ave have an anonymous description of Athens (T Oearpa KOI &L?iacrKaX(ia. rtuv AOrjvwv, see L. Ross, Archdo- logischc Aufsdtze, i. p. 245), from Avhicli may be gathered a tolerable idea of the deep ignorance of the times. In Rome the rule was to destroy as far as possible all ancient sculptures, except such as were in so~ne Avay identified with Christianity. The reaction against this manner of proceed ing at first took the form of collecting ancient sarcophagi for the modern purposes of burying- grounds. By the 15th and 16th centuries this taste had developed into an enthu siasm, Avhich spread even into the south of Germany, for the possession of ancient sculptures as models for the study of artists. In the beginning of the 17th century this enthu siasm gaA r e Avay to a habit of viewing ancient works of art only as so many illustrations of ancient beliefs and modes of life, a habit in which the French and the Dutch Avere distinguished, and of which the results are nowhere more apparent than in Montfaucon s L Antiquite cxpliquee et reprcsentee en figures, Paris, 1722, Avith its uncritical text and inaccurate engravings. The taste of the times pre ferred literature to art, and accordingly the collection of ancient monuments, adapted to the illustration of classical Avriters, and especially the poets, was assiduously folloAved. A typical example of the one-sidedness of this tendency is to be seen in Spence s Potymetis, or an Enquiry concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of the Ancient Artists, London, 1755, fol. A really valuable vork of the period, however, Avas the collec tion of passages in the ancient writers bearing upon artists, entitled Catalogus Artificum, by Fr. Junius (Frangois Dujon), which retained the position of a standard work until supplanted by Sillig s Catalogue Artificum, Dresden, 1827, which in turn held its ground until the appearance- of H. Brunn s Gcschichte der Griechischen Kiinstler, 2 vols.,. 1853 and 1859. Up to the middle of the 1 7th century no steps had been taken to A isit and explore the monuments of Greece. The pioneers in this work Avere J. Spon, a physician of Lyons,, and George Wheler, an Englishman, Avho travelled together in 1675-76 through Italy, Dalmatia, and Greece, and pub lished each a separate account of their journey (J. Spon, Voyage d Italic, de Dalmatia, de Grece, ct du Levant, Lyon, 1678; G. Wheler, Journey into Greece, London, 1682). In the year previous to their arrival in Greece, the Marquis de Nointel, French ambassador at the Porte, had paid a short visit to Athens, and set Carrey, a French artist, to. work to draAV the sculptures of the Parthenon and somo- of the buildings of the town. These draAvings are now in the Bibliotheque at Paris, and though mostly sketched hurriedly, or from an aAvkAvard point of VICAV, form an inA r aluable record of the sculptures of the Parthenon^ destroyed shortly after (1637) by the bombardment of Athens by the Venetians under Morosini. The discovery of Herculaneum in 1720 and of Pompeii in 1748 opened a new era in the history of archaeology. The antiquarian spirit gave way to an historical and scientific method, of which Count Caylus (Recueil d An- tlqnitcs, Paris, 1752-54,7 A ols.) may be regarded as the forerunner, and Winckelmann (1717-1768) as the actual

founder. The fame of the latter rests on his tAvo great