Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller.
- Karl Otfried Müller
- Date:
- 1852
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller. Source: Wellcome Collection.
226/664
![established forms therefore Avere adopted for sacred person- ages, the more so as it was thought that, by going back to tlic oldest images which they possessed, the actual shape assumed 4 by these characters was retained. The countenances at the same time were fashioned after an ideal, although at the same time rudely treated fundamental form; the costume was sub- stantially Greek, and the drapery was disposed in large masses 5 after the antique manner. Mediaeval peculiarities in dress and mien only penetrated by degrees into the world of anti- quity, and that more in newly acquired than in old tradi- 6 tional figures. Everywhere at that period traces of an ancient school, nowhere a peculiar living conception of nature, from the renewed study of which emanated, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the fresh efflorescence of art, and eman- cipation from those typical and lifeless forms which continue to exist in the Greek church till the present day, as the last remnant of a perished world of art. 1. Cod. Theod. xiii, 4. de excusationibus artificum. 2. The catacombs of the Christians show how even heathen subjects (especially Orpheus) were adopted into Christian allegory. Vintage, Ger- hard, Beschr. Roms ii, 2. s. 234. The porphyry urn of Constantia is adorned with Bacchian scenes, Winckelm. vi, 1. 8. 342; a river god on the sarcophagus Bouill. iii. pi. 65. The first Christian emperors have on coins personified representations of cities, and other subjects borrowed from heathendom. Constantine wears the labarum and the phcenix (fe- licium temporum reparatio), Constantius while holding the labarum is Crowned by a Victory. R. Walsh, Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals and Gems as illustrating the progress of Christianity, p. 81 sqq. R. Rochette Premier Mem. sur les antiq. chr6tiennes. Peintures des catacombes. P. 1836. Deux M6m. Pierres sepuicr. 1836. [Trois. Mem. objets deposes dans les tombeaux ant. qui se retrouvent en tout ou en partie dans les cimetiferes chretiens. 1838.] But newly formed subjects also, such as the good shepherd, appear to have been conceived at this time in an artistic manner. Rumohr describes a meritorious statue of the good shepherd at Rome, Ital. Forsch. i. s. 168; a good figure of the kind as a sarcophagus in the Louvre 772. Clarac, pi. 122. On the gemma pastoralis see Thes. gemm. astrif. iii. p. 82. Constantine caused the good shepherd as well as many scenes from the Old and New Testament to be sculptured (Euseb. V. Const, iv. 49), among the former Daniel, who, together with Jonah, was the most favourite subject of typical representation. In the emblems of the earliest Christians indeed (Miinter, Sinnbilder und Kunstvorstellun- gen der alten Christen. 1825) there is much pettiness and trifling (as in the fish, IX0T2), partly from the frequently enjoined effort to avoid everything like idols even in signet-rings; yet there are others that are happily conceived even on the score of art (the lamb, the thirsting hart, the dove with the olive branch). The sentiments of reflecting Christians were from the first much divided, at Rome on the whole they were more for art, in Africa more strict. Tertullian, Augustine, and Clemens of Alexandria speak with severity against all e.xercise of sculpture and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2178016x_0226.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
