In the case that is now to occupy us, we have not to go back so very far in the history of the world.

FIG. 4.

The ornamental representations of plants are of two kinds. Where we have to deal with a simple pictorial reproduction of plants as symbols (laurel branches, boughs of olive and fir, and branches of ivy), i. e., with a mere characteristic decoration of a technical structure, stress is laid upon the most faithful reproduction of the object possible - the artist is again and again referred to the study of Nature in order to imitate her. Hence, as a general rule, there is less difficulty in the explanation of these forms, because even the minute details of the natural object now and then offer points that one can fasten upon. It is quite another thing when we have to deal with actual decoration which does not aim at anything further than at employing the structural laws of organisms in order to organize the unwieldy substance, to endow the stone with a higher vitality. These latter forms depart, even at the time when they originate, very considerably from the natural objects. The successors of the originators soon still further modify them by adapting them to particular purposes, combining and fusing them with other forms so as to produce particular individual forms which have each their own history (e.g., the acanthus ornament, which, in its developed form, differs very greatly from the acanthus plant itself); and in a wider sense we may here enumerate all such forms as have been raised by art to the dignity of perfectly viable beings, e.g., griffins, sphinxes, dragons, and angels.

Fig. 5.

The deciphering and derivation of such forms as these is naturally enough more difficult; in the case of most of them we are not even in possession of the most necessary preliminaries to the investigation, and in the case of others there are very important links missing (e.g., for the well-known Greek palmettas). In proportion as the representation of the plant was a secondary object, the travesty has been more and more complete. As in the case of language, where the root is hardly recognizable in the later word, so in decorative art the original form is indistinguishable in the ornament. The migration of races and the early commercial intercourse between distant lands have done much to bring about the fusion of types; but again in contrast to this we find, in the case of extensive tracts of country, notably in the Asiatic continent, a fixity, throughout centuries, of forms that have once been introduced, which occasions a confusion between ancient and modern works of art, and renders investigations much more difficult.

An old French traveler writes: "J'ai vu dans le trésor d'Ispahan les vetements de Tamerlan; ils ne different en rien de ceux d'aujourd'hui." Ethnology, the natural sciences, and last, but not least, the history of technical art are here set face to face with great problems.

FIG. 6.

In the case in point, the study of the first group of artistic forms that have been elaborated by Western art leads to definite results, because the execution of the forms in stone can be followed on monuments that are relatively not very old, that are dated, and of which the remains are still extant. In order to follow the development, I ask your permission to go back at once to the very oldest of the known forms. They come down to us from the golden era of Greek decorative art - from the fourth or fifth century B.C. - when the older simple styles of architecture were supplanted by styles characterized by a greater richness of structure and more developed ornament. A number of flowers from capitals in Priene, Miletus, Eleusis, Athens (monument of Lysicrates), and Pergamon; also flowers from the calathos of a Greek caryatid in the Villa Albani near Rome, upon many Greek sepulchral wreaths, upon the magnificent gold helmet of a Grecian warrior (in the Museum of St. Petersburg) - these show us the simplest type of the pattern in question, a folded leaf, that has been bulged out, inclosing a knob or a little blossom (see Figs. 3 and 4). This is an example from the Temple of Apollo at Miletus, one that was constructed about ten years ago, for educational purposes.

Here is the specimen of the flower of the monument to Lysicrates at Athens, of which the central part consists of a small flower or fruits (Figs. 5 and 6).

FIG. 7.

The form passes over into Roman art. The larger scale of the buildings, and the pretensions to a greater richness in details, lead to a further splitting up of the leaf into acanthus-like forms. Instead of a fruit-form a fir-cone appears, or a pine-apple or other fruit in an almost naturalistic form.

In a still larger scale we have the club-shaped knob developing into a plant-stem branching off something after the fashion of a candelabrum, and the lower part of the leaf, where it is folded together in a somewhat bell-shaped fashion, becomes in the true sense of the word a campanulum, out of which an absolute vessel-shaped form, as e.g. is to be seen in the frieze of the Basilica Ulpia in Rome, becomes developed.

FIG. 8.

Such remains of pictorial representation as are still extant present us with an equally perfect series of developments. The splendid Graeco-Italian vessels, the richly ornamented Apulian vases, show flowers in the spirals of the ornaments, and even in the foreground of the pictorial representations, which correspond exactly to the above mentioned Greek relief representations. [The lecturer sent round, among other illustrations, a small photograph of a celebrated vase in Naples (representing the funeral rites of Patroclus), in which the flower in question appears in the foreground, and is perhaps also employed as ornament.] (Figs. 7 and 8.)