Fairbanks, Arthur: Greek art: the basis of later European art (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1933)

GREEK ART

them are heads and figures or symbols of the
issuing state, that the type of relief is Greek
rather than, for instance, the sunken relief of
Egypt — all because we derive our ideas of
coinage from Greece. But the fact that the
effort for a higher artistic standard in coins and
medals has always through the intervening
ages been inspired by the coins of ancient
Greece, is evidence that with the economic in-
vention and the technical process we owe to
Greece here also an incalculable debt in the
field of art.
It is a question how far the processes of
making gold jewelry and utensils of silver and
bronze came to Rome and then to later Europe
from Greece. We know that the Etruscans
were expert metal workers, but we know that
their artistic designs were ordinarily based on
Greek models, and the technical processes
which were passed on to Rome may well also
have come from Greece. The shape of a bronze
pitcher, the free use of formal ornament en-
graved and repousse, and often the decoration
of figured scenes in repousse, were prized in
Rome and later Europe as they had been prized
in their Greek home. Apparently the processes
used in making artistic metal work were refined
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