Part 3

Now in order that only the faithful should enter, and that the enemies might be detected, a system of tesseræ was invented, and soon these were made in the form of engraved pietradura; the designs always were of the simplest character--a dove, two or three fish, two palms crossed, etc., and other religious gem-tokens; this formed the glyptic epoch known as the Early Christian gems.

Be it understood, there was no representation of “God,” the “Father,” or of “Christ;” only simple symbols of the class already described; symbols of their simple faith.

This was a period of glyptic work in which a series of gems were engraved by a people who pursued their avocation under peculiarly trying circumstances; they were the “Early Christians.”

The children born of those who had already espoused the new doctrine were taught with the first lessons of life to know, to revere, and to trust in the Saviour; with their earliest lisping words, from the cradle they learned to plead in prayer for divine protection.

The earliest Christians, the first converts, born in paganism, had not the opportunities with which their offspring and descendants were favored; they had to renounce the superstitions in which they had been reared, and were often obliged to sever the friendly ties of youth.

These first enrolled with the followers of Christ, pagans, whose convictions impelled them to accept the Redeemer, offered to their inquiring hearts, commenced anew lives with many pagan prejudices and customs clinging to them.

Some of them were incisori, and it is interesting to observe among the comparatively few gems of this epoch the evidence of transition. Many of these gems unquestionably bearing some of the simpler Christian decoration were still adorned with pagan designs. On one we find Astarte; on others, Serapis, Mercury, Venus, or Apollo. The divinity, the loveliness of expression sometimes given to these transition portraits seem to have been the work of artists whose souls were imbued with the singular beauty of that Divine Man whom Publius Lentulus announced to the Senate as “the prophet of truth,” a man whose personal beauty excelled all human creatures--and yet the effigy really was of some pagan deity. These gems, however, which were characterized by remnants of pagan decoration, were only of the epoch immediately succeeding the institution of the sect of “followers of Christ,” and preceding the dawning struggle of the “Early Christians,” to establish their belief and to retain their rights as citizens. They renounced the idolatrous religion of the nation, and their glyptic work was generally typical of the purity and simplicity of their faith and their devotion to its observance.

BYZANTINE.

One might naturally suppose that the gems of the early Christians would abound in representations of scriptural events and incidents of the life of Christ. Such was not the case; these subjects were abundantly produced by the Byzantines about the fifth century A. D. This can be accounted for from the fact that most of these subject-gems were engraved to decorate the sacred vessels and paraphernalia of the church altars in Byzantium.

With Constantine we find the Byzantine epoch in its maturity. With the simplicity of the early Christians we have remarked that everything like representation of the Godhead was eliminated or rather forbidden.

It was the Byzantines who created for the gem market token cameos and intaglios on which were incised effigies of the Holy Family, and incidents in every phase in that series of events that never has been equalled in historic interest in the records of time: the birth, life, trial, sufferings, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.

Elaborate details characterized the cameos picturing the triumphs of that Christian emperor and the portraiture of his mother Helena.

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BYZANTINE CHRIST.

The annunciation, the visitation, the birth in the manger, the adoration of the wise men and the magi, the bearing of the cross, the crucifixion, etc.

With the Byzantine epoch we meet with the Emperor Constantine as we turn from the first period of decadence, in fact, almost demise, of the art of the incisori.

The justice, energy, and enterprise of Constantine showered benefits on all industrious men in the Eastern Roman world. Skilled workmen, spared from the absorbing conflicts of war, anew devoted themselves in peace to their mechanical avocations.

Prosperity ruled and was assured to the people. Foremost among these artisans were the gem-engravers; the demand for their glyptic productions, and the amount produced, was phenomenal.

The dignity of Constantine’s successful empire was sustained by a retinue of courtiers; luxury characterized all the imperial decorations of his palace.

His willing subjects supplied his demands and gratified his refined tastes by zealously executing his liberal commands in all branches of art, and especially in the art of gem-engraving, which contributed largely to the court adornment.

Recognizing the near relationship between gems and coins, we here see that Constantine, shortly after he had established his empire in Byzantium, removed the pagan emblems from the coins of the empire, and issued others on which he caused to be impressed the legend illustrating and recording the peculiar incident of his conversion; to this was added a phœnix, emblematic of the renovation of his empire, together with the monogram of Christ, and the Angel of Victory, which in his vision had directed his course at the time of his conversion to Christianity and triumph over the pagan enemy.

At the time of his baptism at Nicomedia he clad himself in a white robe, and from that time he never resumed the imperial purple.

This incident was also engraved, and formed the subject of a design on a later coin.

The engravers employed by Constantine were incisori of the highest rank of that period; none others were in favor. They executed portraits of his family, of his wife Fausta, of his sons, and of himself--in combat, in bust, on horseback, in imperial power; always laureated, and principally on cameos, very few intaglios being cut at this time.

Several important examples have survived the rack and ruin of time, and may be seen in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the British Museum at London, the Royal and Imperial Collections of Vienna and St. Petersburg, and in my collection.

These unique gems, those commissioned by Constantine, however, form a small proportion of the glyptic harvest from the Byzantine period. With Constantine commences the series of scriptural cameos, which continue during several years in Byzantia.

The great number of cameos preserved from this epoch bearing scriptural subjects, which were ordered and engraved for reliquaries and every description of vessels, and for the adornment of altar book-bindings, for church and cathedral ceremonies, far exceeds in quantity those imperial portraits, and to an appreciator of distinctive specialties in a representative art collection they are more interesting.

After a few heads of Christ attributed to the Sassanians, we meet in the reign of Constantine the first gem portraits of our Saviour. These sacred portraits, even at times rudely rendered, have often more divinity in them than many similar subjects of a later period.

The distinctive, most characteristic, Byzantine gems are the large series of scriptural cameos, designed in relief for the ornamentation of the sacred vessels and other paraphernalia on the altars of the churches at the Byzantine capital.

MEDIÆVAL.

The era in the decline in art was sensibly marked in the glyptic branch. The very rude and often grotesquely drawn designs we meet in this long period, the Middle Ages, may well be termed the dark days.

The eras of art in the history of nations have been marked by the same changing characteristics; light has invariably been succeeded by darkness; there are shadows ever following the bright rays of the sun. This day of imagery and sculpture, feeble at its dawn, radiant in its morning, powerful in the glory and effulgence of its meridian, deteriorated as evening advanced, faded in the twilight, was at last veiled in the long period of decadence--the Middle Ages, the night of art.

These people, so credulous and so trusting in these token-stones, by degrees formed themselves into groups, at first of two or three, with ties of pious friendship; subsequently these associations gradually increased in the numbers of their adherents until the growing fanatic idea of closing one’s eyes on the sinful world was the incentive which formed at first asylums, and soon after monasteries; and the monastic life became popular; wavering men, feeling themselves too weak to face the temptations of the world, resorted to these holy retreats and there sought God. Few reasonable men can be truly happy without occupation, and, happily for us, these recluses saw the importance and the historic interest of engraved gems. Many interesting intaglios were thus spared from loss and destruction.

The numerous orders of monks during this barbarous epoch collected all that possibly could be saved from the destroying avalanche, and with great diligence transcribed on parchment types of the existing literature.

The laborers in the limited field of art in the Middle Ages were these dwellers in monasteries. To them we are indebted for some rude fibres in the fabric with which this period of darkness is canopied; they walked under it in the simplicity of monastic life; and to us at least it conveys the lesson that man has forgotten so much, knows so little, and has so much to learn.

Their intaglios were generally of a spiritual and devotional character, though some of them relieved the tedium of cloister life by creating in _basso-rilievo_ on bone and ivory the most ludicrous and mirth-provoking designs.

The subjects of the engraved gems of the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries are to a great extent unmeaning figures and heads--portraits of unknown personages, now and then reproductions of ancient Roman emperors and military heroes of historic renown, yet poorly rendered and bad in execution.

There are also many inexplicable subjects, portraying groups of three four, five, and six figures, evidently intended to commemorate events in history; also mythological processions, both in rude intaglios and equally mediocre cameos, giving triumphs of Silenus and Bacchus, portraying these heroes in forms, the drawing of which would raise blushes on their cheeks could they return to earth and be allowed to criticise their effigies. Silenus, even full of wine, would have growled and remonstrated, and would have pronounced some of them absurd misrepresentations; they, however, are very interesting, if only on account of their contrast with the examples of Greek and Roman glyptic art.

In this epoch, again, we find instances of the sensitiveness of the numismatic branch of the art of gem-engraving, for the models of all pieces of money are intaglios, and thus far they are related to the glyptic art; and it has always been the first industry giving evidence of a decline.

The view of these relics of cloister art convinces us that they of the dark ages did not contribute the truly beautiful.... Yet shadows pass “with time and the hour.”... Night is passing, ... comes the gray, ... comes the dawn, ... comes the morning light. Creatures that at evening ceased their song, tune now their pipes and sing again; they chant anon the requiem of the Night of Art; and yet anon, they sing the coming of the light. They celebrate at last, with hope, the renewing of all things beautiful in art. The orb of day gilds the horizon; man beholds the aurora of approaching day.

RENAISSANCE.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, under the encouragement of the Medici family, skilled artisans again emigrated to Italy as coadjutors in the great revival of all that was beautiful in gem-engraving.

They created, for the glyptic phase of art, a position almost as important as it had enjoyed in the first century A. D.

It is not surprising that comparatively so few engraved gems have been handed down to us when we consider the tides of the last twenty centuries as a great sea which has borne to the shores of civilized Europe, and later to America, specimens of ancient art creations--that sea, at times placid, yet ever and anon turbulent with devastating storms, whose iconoclastic waves broke upon the ancient sites of antiquity, destroying treasures that thus have been irreparably lost to archæological science and to our museums.

As a child becomes restless with the consciousness of coming day before it fully wakes from sleep, man, weary of this night of ignorance and the atmosphere of barbarism--fretful on his couch under the yoke of tyranny, striving to shake it off while yet enveloped by the shades of error, rose up to seek an element he knew not, a light he dreamed would come!

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RENAISSANCE-MEDICI PERIOD.

He burst the cords that bound his strength; he pierced the clouds which dulled his vision, and, leaving his prison-house, reached forth his fearless arm, and pushing aside the sombre folds of the long intervening veil, peered into the outer world of progress, and in the gray gloom he descried a distant terrace. With rapid strides, through furrows of popular prejudice and cinders of past magnificence, over crumbled arch and fallen pillar, frieze, and pediment, he sped his way; nor flagged nor halted, till the summit reached, he stood and gazed with earnest look out into the coming time; he beheld in the vista before him many streams flowing into the sea of the future. In the horizon gleamed again the omen of coming day; it was the harbinger of a new birth.

The light of truth flashed upon his mind, discovering to him his freed intellect. Unlike the denizens of the earlier age of luxury and repletion, he stood a thinking man, refreshed, invigorated, and ready for work; and quickly he applied himself; called forth his kinsman; his voice was heard throughout the land; men awoke everywhere and wrought in the ateliers of the new life.

Through the air came strains as of music, from creaking of timber, cracking of stone, the carol of the painter, hammer and anvil, plashing oar, wheel and shaft, mallet and chisel, and with the new demand upon the gem-engravers came--the Oratorio of the Renaissance.

With this awakening came another influx of skilled artisans into Italy, not to compete, as before, in the great established art market of the world. Now they came in response to appeals for master-workmen, came to instruct, to encourage the new birth; to lead the drowsy ones out into the full light of day, the day of a rising constellation in which once more shone brilliantly a meritorious school of gem-engravers.

Though Germany, France, and other nations shared in the work, Italy guarded the cradle of the Renaissance, and as a faithful, loving parent, watched the developing features of the youth, which grew apace, reading there the promise of a growing power that was destined to lead future generations to excellence and prosperity in art.

Italy accomplished the first great work of this period by furnishing models for both industrial and fine arts, infusing vitality into other nations. The influential families of the Medici and Farnese, Popes Leo X. and Paul III., many cardinals and nobles, were instrumental in the revival of gem-engraving; especially Lorenzo de Medici contributed to its redevelopment and growth by inducing artists to devote themselves to its practice and bestowing on them his liberal patronage.

The vigorous manner of artists of this period is so marked that even in the reproduction of antique designs a connoisseur can recognize their peculiar style. Their original works are highly meritorious, attaining a great degree of excellence. Many rose to eminence; some, not content with rising in the firmanent of the dawning effulgence, aspired to positions in the bright constellation of fame, producing engraved gems for the ornamentation of costumes, armor, inlaying and embossing of vases, tankards, etc.

SUCCEEDING DECLINES AND REVIVALS.

Constant encouragement was given to this branch of art-industry throughout the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth century; but after the death of the Emperor Charles V., in 1558, recurred another period of decline. Private and royal accumulations of art works were again the victims of depredation; cabinets and museums were pillaged and scattered by military marauders, as one after another the great cities of the Continent of Europe were besieged and conquered.

The glyptic, of all the arts, was the most easily affected by the changing fortunes of nations.

These circumstances compelled artists to give their attention more particularly to church architecture, to the production of large devotional basso-rilievos for the altar, and sculptured figures, which, though representing sacred subjects, were often too voluptuous in form, and lacking the essential qualities of true art.

In the last twenty years of the eighteenth century gem-engraving received fresh impetus; new practitioners were enrolled from Germany, England, and France.

Some of these resided many years in England, pursuing their profession assiduously and profitably. In this period quantities of intaglios and cameos were reproduced from the most salable antique subjects. To supply the wants of enthusiastic amateurs frauds were freely committed, by close imitation, and the insertion of signatures of celebrated Greek and Roman engravers, though the age produced artists of the highest ability and honor.

The works of Natter, Sirletti, Pickler, Marchand, Pistrucci, Santarelli, and others come to us so directly from their hands that we feel they almost belong to our day, and we think of them as of acquaintances.

Many of the gems of Giovanni Pickler compare favorably with the finest incisions of the Greek, and even with the work of the renowned Dioscorides.

During the latter part of the eighteenth century and the commencement of the nineteenth, monarchs and noblemen indulged in making collections of gems to such an extent that the list of patrons increased competition, and fabulous prices were obtained from such buyers as the Empress Catherine II. of Russia, the Prince Frederick of Prussia, the Duke of Orleans, George III., the Empress Josephine of France, and many of the English nobility, among others the Dukes of Devonshire and Marlborough.

Almost until now no plea has been offered for glyptology as a factor contributing historical data. The mass of scientists have been contented with musty old volumes, and these little message-bearing stones have been regarded as nothing more than curious ancient articles of luxury, yet you will remark we do not look on them in that light; we recognize, as we justly should, each and every piece as part of a great story, recording and illustrating many epochs and eras in this world’s history, and patiently we have been seeking to replace each fragment into its proper place in the inscribed diagram, until we are convinced that we read thereon many things that no manuscripts or books have communicated to us.

SOME TYPES OF REMARKABLE GEMS.

My entire collection in the Free Museum of Science and Art of the University of Pennsylvania must be examined to see types of all these epochs. It may be well to notice here three or four very remarkable gems of which monographs have also been published.

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.

Ariadne is seated on the rocks of Dia, where Bacchus found her; at her feet is her panther. Bacchus bears in his hand a thrysus; his javelin with its point in the form of a pine cone; his head wreathed with ivy and grape leaves; his hand lovingly placed on sad Ariadne’s shoulder, who has just been deserted by Theseus. Bacchus, deeply in love (which is indicated by the figure of Cupid), says to her, “I shall care for thee.” The panther at the feet of Ariadne is emblematic of the principal and most important incident in her life, her love for Theseus.

Ariadne was the daughter of Minos, King of Crete. She fell in love with Theseus when he went as one of the seven youths whom the Athenians were obliged to send every year with seven maidens to Crete to be devoured by the Minotaur.

Ariadne provided Theseus with a sword with which he slew the Minotaur, and with a thread which enabled him to find his way out of the labyrinth; they then fled to the island of Naxos (Dia), where Theseus, warned by a god in a dream, deserted her. Bacchus arrived opportunely from India, finding Ariadne in a state of grief and consternation, which even added to her charming beauty; he quenched her tears, consoled her, and took her to himself. This exquisite gem is a fine representation of Renaissance work (see plate on p. 81).

JUPITER ÆGIOCHUS.

Among examples of antique glyptic art, by referring to my late work on “Engraved Gems: Their Place in the History of Art,” you will find an extended notice of the superb ancient cameo on chrysoprase of Jupiter Ægiochus. It is the eighth of importance in the remarkable antique cameos that have been preserved from the early centuries after Christ. It is of remarkable dimensions, being 167 millimetres in height by 130 millimetres in breadth.

It is of the close of the epoch of Marcus Aurelius or the earlier years of the reign of Commodus. The style is that of the Græco-Roman art. The work is very beautiful for that epoch, and there rests in this head of the master of the gods an accent of grandeur in which one feels the reflection of the original Greek of the better centuries, imitated here by the engraver of the Græco-Roman age.

It is an interesting circumstance, which merits particular attention, that the cameo Zulian coming from Ephesus and this Jupiter Ægiochus are certainly of the workmanship of Asia Minor.

Early in this century this cameo made part of the celebrated Northwick Collection of England. Afterwards it was acquired by a wealthy connoisseur in France, and later passed into the possession of M. Feuardent, Paris, when, with his permission, an engraving of it appeared, with five quarto pages of text and notes, in the _Gazette Archæologique_, Paris, 1877, edited by Baron J. De Witte, Membre de l’Institut and François Lenormant.

M. Adrien Longperier, the distinguished glyptologist and savant of the Institut de France, some thirty years ago made a study of this gem, and seriously contemplated its acquisition for France; he urged the French Government to authorize its purchase for the collection in the Salle des Pierres gravées in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, or for the Museum of the Louvre. Several other museums also negotiated for its purchase, but the late owner being firm in his demand, the price caused them to delay, and now it belongs to America, being part of my collection.

THE TRIUMPH OF CONSTANTINE.

Among the most important and interesting antique gems in my collection is one engraved when Constantine held the Roman Empire in Byzantia, which came into the possession of the Court of Russia.