knew
they had two eyes, and in profile they seemed only to have one. Look at
the Selinus marbles, and you will observe that figures, of which the body
is seen in profile, have the full face turned 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]