Studio: international art (14.1898)

Tanagra Terra-cottas

It would be trying the patience of the reader to
deal with all of these, and I will therefore only
shortly set out the more probable opinion which lies
midway between those of the two most forcible ones.

It is certain that down to a certain epoch
most if not all the figurines which found a place
in tombs represented divinities. It is also certain
that races do not change their ideas of theism
and a life to come in a century or two, and
it is very improbable that faiths which had lasted
for ages, and which continued in vogue long
after the fashion for these statuettes had passed,
would be dissipated during the epoch when
these statuettes were produced. It certainly re-
quires a stretch of the imagination to recognise
Demeter in these pensive maidens, or Persephone
gathering flowers in the fields of Nysa, in the oft-
recurring figure of a girl playing at knucklebones;
still more so any deity in a barber shaving a
customer, or a pedlar crying his wares, or in the
obscenities which occur now and again, or even
to understand the raison d'etre of Leda and the
Swan (No. 5), or The Rape of Enropa (No. 2),
although Dr. Frohner has argued that this is not a
rendering of the usually accepted story, but repre-
sents a young girl who after death becomes the
spouse of the supreme god. On the other hand,
we have in Mr. Salting’s group of A Soul Escorted to
Charon's Boat (No. 4), an evident connection with
death, but it should be added that subjects such as
this are quite exceptional. It is now agreed that many
104

found their place in the
tomb as ornaments origin-
ally belonging to the
deceased, others to amuse
him or to disarm his dis-
pleasure against those who
had the temerity to survive
him, others perhaps as the
cortege of a divinity—
Dionysus, for instance.

But many cannot be
fitted to any such use, and
one is bound to formulate
some such reason as this.
The maker had to think of
his customers, and provide
them with novelties. So
long as the fashion was for
religious images he made
them. But when, with
Praxiteles, the Olympian
gods showed themselves
in the likeness of man,
he followed suit and altered his primitive forms.

Again, it is inevitable that subjects, originally
religious, lose in time their meaning by mere force
of repetition. The continuous repetition of gene-
rations of an original conception weakens and
ultimately effaces the significatiofi of the myth, until
the figure becomes nothing more than a mechanical
reproduction by an artist whose first care is to make
a beautiful form and picturesque ensemble.

Especially would this be the case with these
terra-cottas, where the craftsman used as his base a
quantity of moulds, which his ingenuity transformed
into a variety of subjects. Starting, for instance, with
the same torso, he utilised it for very different sub-
jects by ringing the changes with his stock of heads,
arms, and ornaments, and altering these again when
in the soft clay he used his dexterously handled tools.

The subject of the fabrication alone is a most
interesting one, and one of especial value to those
who would study the subject as experts, but here
we must leave it.

The history of funerary and votive offerings may
be traced onwards and downwards even to to-day;
but it must suffice in this paper to treat of them
only at the period of their most artistic existence,
and when they certainly presented an unusual
phase of art, one of a most beautiful and fascinating
character, and of a high standard of merit.

As such they deserve recognition and attention
at the hands of all those who would know some-
thing of the history of the world’s art.