Bronze Work of the Geometric Period and Its Relation to Later Art Author(s): S. Casson Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 42, Part 2 (1922), pp. 207-219 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/625903 . Accessed: 08/01/2015 16:28 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 8 Jan 2015 16:28:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BRONZE WORK OF THE GEOMETRIC PERIOD AND ITS RELATION TO LATER ART 'IN the pottery of the Geometric style,' says Dr. Buschor in his Greek Vase Painting,1 'are latent the forces which we see afterwards expanding in contact with the East as well as the oldest beginnings that we can trace of that brilliant continuous development which led to the proud heights of Klitias, Euphronios and Meidias. Its producers may be unreservedly described as Greeks.' The statement. is a challenge to the less cautious supporters of the con- tinuity of Bronze and Iron Age culture in Greece. But it is concerned only with vases and vase-painting. One is tempted to search farther afield for fuller illumination, particularly in branches of art other than vase-painting. Whatever stage of development a culture may be in, it always requires pottery, however crude and in however small a quantity, since pottery is for use: objects purely ornamental, however, can, under certain circumstances, be dispensed with. In pottery, therefore, a certain minimum of continuity in tradition and inheritance from previous cultures is inevitable; but in the arts of pure adornment this may not be the case. Thus sculpture and bronze work are branches of art which may remain submerged during periods of unrest and upheaval. Peoples on the move will not burden themselves with works of art; conquerors in the flush of victory have not the inclination nor the conquered the courage or incentive to develop the non-utilitarian arts and crafts. Thus the continuity of the Bronze and Iron Ages in Greece may be tested by evidence other than that of pottery; metal-work in particular may afford instructive evidence, especially ornaments in bronze, which, from their nature and material, might contain the germ of revival and continuity. I propose, then, in the course of this paper, to examine some of the earliest known examples of the bronze-worker's art of post-Mycenaean times, both from the point of view of the technique employed and of the types most favoured. The results may help to throw some light on the relation which the cruder plastic works of Geometric art bear to fully developed Hellenic art. That the period of unrest and upheaval in history which corresponds to the so-called Geometric period in art produced no sculpture seems certain. On a priori grounds it seems almost incredible that sculpture, however crude, can have been achieved at least in the tenth and ninth centuries B.c. In fact no examples of it have been found. That the earliest and crudest bronzes of Geometric times are not studied is principally due to the fact that they are 1 P. 18, Mr. Richards' translation. 207 This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 8 Jan 2015 16:28:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 208 S. CASSON almost wholly unattractive, often ludicrous. Yet, standing, as they do, at the threshold of Hellenic art their importance is manifest.2 Technique.-The method of manufacture of the crudest and earliest Geometric bronze figures is not so much the method of bronze-casting as that of bronze-welding. The simplest human figures (see Figs. 4, b and 7, a, b, c) in bronze consist of one or more bars of bronze which are hammered out into the four component limbs. The legs, as a rule, remain together and are barely separated, consisting of two parallel bars. The arms consist of smaller bars welded on or bent and beaten into the required attitude. The waist is the central body of the bar, and the shoulders and breast are formed by flat- tening the upper part of the bar itself. The narrowness of the waist is increased and emphasised by the cutting away of the arms.3 These 'fiddle-shaped' waists are the result of technique and are, I think, in no way derived from Mycenaean or Cycladic ' fiddle-shaped ' idols. The head and neck are achieved by the working of the end of the bar. All other bronzes of the crudest Geometric type are similarly formed. Welding, cutting and beating are the three processes principally employed. It is thus abundantly clear that the earliest bronze figures exhibit none of the characteristics of the fine and elaborate works of art of the Cretan bronze-casters. The Tylissos bronzes,4the praying figure in the British Museum of the Tylissos type,5 and the magnificent bull and athlete recently acquired by Captain E. G. Spencer-Churchill6 are the products of an age which had mastered the art of solid bronze-casting. The Tylissos and similar figures have the appearance of having been cast from clay models; the fine bull and athlete group is, according to Sir Arthur Evans, in all probability cast from a finer model which may have been of wax. In any case welding and beating and such simpler and cruder processes are not part of the stock-in-trade of the Cretan bronze-worker. It is remarkable that we have, as yet, no examples of earlier Cretan bronze craft in which these Geometric processes occur. Throughout the history of Cretan art bronzes were made, as far as we know, by the one process of casting. With the cruder Geometric figures, on the other hand, welding and beating is the earliest stage; there comes next an inter- mediate stage in which the figure is first cast and then treated with the hammer and chisel. Thus the body of a Zeus from Dodona (Fig. 4, b) is composed from the original bar cut and subdivided into limbs. But its hair and features are rendered with the chisel. Two later figures from Arcadia of the same type (Fig. 4, a, c) are, on the other hand, cast and then finished with the finer 2 The examples I have chosen for discus- at Olympia, Argos and the Acropolis. sion are nearly all at Athens, where is by far 3 See De Ridder, Cat. des Bronzes trouv6s the largest and finest collection of Geo- sur I'Acrop., Nos. 692-694, 697, etc. metric bronzes in existence. The larger 4 J. Hazzidakis, Tylissos8 mino- and American l'dpoque European museums have but enne, 1921, P1. VI., and F. N. Pryce, J.H.S. few bronzes of this period; their style and 41, 1921, p. 86 ff., and Fig. 2. workmanship is not such as to appeal to 5 Pryce, op. cit. collectors by whose agency most of the large 6 Sir Arthur Evans, J.H.S. 41, 1921, museums outside Greece are stocked. The p. 247 ff. A single and not a double mould bulk of the Geometric bronzes at Athens was probably used for this figure. are the result of excavations such as those This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Thu, 8 Jan 2015 16:28:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BRONZE WORK OF THE GEOMETRIC PERIOD 209 tools, the features, in particular, being simply chiselled in. A helmeted warrior of the 'Promachos' type from Dodona (Fig. 7, c) is similarly finished after casting, though it retains, more than most bronzes, the appearance of the older 'bar technique.' The final stage is not properly reached until the sixth century, when the figure is, as with the Cretan bronzes, cast complete in every detail in one process. Even then finishing touches are often added with the chisel (see Fig. 6, a, b, two fine bronzes from Olympia). Thus not until the sixth century, strictly speaking, did the art of making small bronze figures attain once more the level reached by the Oretan bronze- workers of Middle Minoan times. FIG. 1.-BRONZE HORSE FIG. 2.-BRONZE GROUPOF MAN FROM OLYMPIA. AND CENTAUR: NEW YORK. Developmentof types.-I have chosen four principal type-groups as being most clearly illustrative of the development of traditional types from the earliest Geometric times to the period of full Hellenic art. None of these types is to be found in pre-Geometric art in a clear and unequivocal way. The Horse.-The first is the standing or walking horse made to be seen en profile. One of the most finely finished examples comes from Olympia (Fig. 1). Similar bronze figures of horses are found on almost all the Geometric sites of the mainland of Greece, from Laconia to the Vardar valley on the east and from Olympia to Leukas on the west.7 Horses of the same type, sometimes with minor variations of treatment, are found farther north in Central Europe at Hallstatt and other Iron Age sites,8 and the type is found again more to the east in the Iron Age cemeteries of the southern Caucasus.9 The extreme popularity of this particular type of ornament in Greece is remark- Hall- 7 See my paper in the Antiquaries' P1.