laying them on, must have been already carried in this painting to a degree of perfection which the skill of the greater number of the cotemporaries of Bularchus had not as yet reached, and consequently that the art of colouring was beginning to dawn, at the latest, in the eighth century before our era. Other facts, few in number, indeed, throw additional light at rare intervals, on this vast and obscure domain of Greek art. I have already mentioned that family of artists which existed at Chios, a family whose birth-place was confounded with that of art, and two members of which, Anthermus and Bupalus, are known to us towards the forty-ninth Olympiad, as victims of the satire of the poet Hipponax. Ægina, where a Dædalean school had been founded by Smilis, a native of that island, where at an early period a vast commerce and a great maritime power flourished; Ægina constantly distinguished itself in ancient times, in the art of casting and working metals, and for a manufacture of sculptured bronzes, which obtained a high reputation among Greek antiquities, one of which, a monument of primitive handicraft, and of a primitive period, has been preserved to the present day, and is now in the French museum. But it is chiefly for the art of engraving coins, particularly those of silver, with regard to which the most probable traditions, in accordance with the most authentic monuments, attribute this first manufacture to the Æginetans, that this people deserves to occupy a distinguished place in the history of ancient art. Whether it is to Phido, King of Argos, who reigned in the ninth century before our era, or to any other prince, that this first use of coins of silver ought to be attributed, it is still certain, from the tradition of history, from the ancient prosperity of the commerce of Ægina, and from the monuments themselves, a great number of which we possess, that the medals of Ægina ought to be considered as the most ancient numismatic monuments, and consequently, for that reason, as monuments of art of the most certain date and of the highest antiquity which have come down to us. The coins of Athens and of Thebes of primitive manufacture, are nearly of the same period, when these first coins of Ægina were struck. The same can be said of those of some other peoples or towns of Greece, either in Europe or in Asia, especially of those of the Leteans of Macedonia; of the Cnidians of Caria; of Methymna in the island of Lesbos, of Sybaris, Caulonia, Pæstum, Crotona, Metapontum,

in Italy; of Messina, Selinuntum, Syracuse, in Sicily. All these coins, which bear more or less, the impress of an art as yet in its infancy, and of a rude handicraft industry, unquestionably belong to the eighth and seventh centuries before our era they are thus the most authentic monuments which remain of the first period of the art, and the only ones from which we can determine its character, and follow its progress by an almost uninterrupted series of cotemporary parallels and successive gradations.

Numismatics, indeed, ought to be considered, especially at this first period of art, as one of the principal elements of its history; an element, however, hitherto so generally neglected, totally omitted by Winckelmann, and without an exact and complete appreciation of which it is no longer possible at the present day to write on the art of the ancients.

Greek vases of the most ancient style, which present in black figures, on a yellow ground the outlines or the nude parts traced with a sharp point on the yet moist clay of the vase, compositions of more or less extent, but almost always symmetrical in their arrangement, a style of drawing more conventional than true, and subjects generally from the most remote mythological traditions-these vases, which compose a numerous and interesting series among those monuments which remain at the present day, in my opinion must be referred to that period of Greek art, which precedes or which immediately follows the fiftieth Olympiad. The greater number of these vases found in Sicily, came probably from the celebrated manufactory of Agrigentum and of Selinuntum, although similar ones have been frequently found in the excavations of Nola, which seems to have been at a certain period the most considerable manufacture, as it was unquestionably the most beautiful of all the painted vases which are known to These vases of ancient style sometimes bear inscriptions relative to each personage represented on them: such is, among others, the famous vase of the museum of Naples, found at Capua, and published by D'Hancarville, representing a hunt of Greek heroes, with the names of each of them written in Greek characters of a very ancient form, and very like the letters traced on a vase strictly Greek, dug up a few years ago at Corinth. Sometimes also, but far more rarely, these vases bear the name of the artist written: such is that beautiful vase found in a tomb of Agrigentum, representing

us.

the combat of Theseus with the Minotaur, with the name of the painter Taleides; sometimes longer inscriptions are to be found on them, as for example, on the Athenian vase which represents Minerva, Poliades, or tutelary, with Greek words, which signify-"I am a prize given by the inhabitants of Athens," a remarkable vase for many reasons, and of which several repetitions are known, which proves the use that was made of these painted vases, under certain circumstances, and in certain localities, of their being given as a prize to the conquerors at the public games, and also proves that the period of the manufacture of these vases was most certainly anterior, from the form of the Greek letters, to the sixth century before our era, and lastly, that the style of the drawing was peculiar to that period of Greek art. I must restrict myself for the present, to a few general observations on the subject of the Greek vases, as I shall have occasion frequently to return to

them.

A monument which can serve better than any other to form a just idea of the state to which Greek art had reached anterior to the fiftieth Olympiad, is the famous chest of Cypselus, deposited at Olympia as a monument of the safety of that tyrant of Corinth, about the thirtieth Olympiad, about 658 before our era, and which Pausanias saw still preserved in the treasury of Olympia, in the second century of the same era. It was a chest of cedar wood, ornamented, on the four sides and on the cover, with figures in basso-rilievo in gold and ivory, or sculptured on the wood itself, representing different mythological subjects and accompanied by inscriptions in ancient Greek. What a treasure would have been the preservation of such a monument which would have exhibited to us at one and the same time, the art, the mythology and the language of Greece, under the most ancient, the most original, the most genuine form. But in the absence of this monument, we possess the accurate and detailed description which Pausanias has given of it, and which is itself one of the most precious documents of the history of art. We can, however, form a very just idea of the style of the design, and of the composition of some of the principal subjects represented on the chest of Cypselus, from reminiscences and imitations more or less exact of these same subjects, which are to be met with on the Greek vases, in the ancient style. I think that I have remarked as many as ten or eleven of these subjects, which may be

referred, with more or less likelihood to this original monument, and among the number of which, I shall mention in particular, the fable of Thetis and Peleus, a subject hitherto little known, and of which I shall have occasion to publish a numerous series of representations of the most ancient as well as of the most beautiful style of art, all traced on painted vases. One of these vases has been recently found at Nola, and there exist several repetitions in the same style, and of the same age.

We now reach a period in which Greek art is going to take a brilliant and rapid flight, the age of Peisistratus, of Croesus, of Polycrates; it is the period of the fiftieth Olympiad, in which the action of different causes, slowly combined, will manifest themselves with an ever-increasing energy, and by an uninterrupted series of monuments of the first order. It is here, more especially, that we must stop, in order to examine with attention the causes which gave rise to this magnificent development of the art, and in order to appreciate its effects. But this important examination will require more time it shall therefore be the subject of our next lecture.

NINTH LECTURE.

Examination of the causes which produced the development of Art among the Greeks towards the period of the fiftieth Olympiad-Offerings deposited in the temples-Historic details on the two most celebrated temples built at that period, the Heræum, of Samos, and the Artemisium of EphesusHonorary Statues erected to the Conquerors in the public games, the principal cause of the complete emancipation of Art-Consequences which result from this custom with regard to the progress of Art-Of the study of the Nude Of the love of the beautiful and of the institutions which produced among the Greeks this disposition so favourable to the Arts.

THERE are in the destinies of nations as well as in those of individuals, decisive circumstances, memorable periods, the influence of which, extending over a lengthened future, determines the very form which an entire society assumes, as it does the existence of a single man. Such seems to have been, in the history of the Greek nation, the period of the 50th Olympiad: then, in effect, was there manifested on every side and by efforts of every kind, a great movement in the minds of all, a precursor of those heroic enterprises, of those admirable works which were to be accomplished in the course of the following generations, and to become, according to the expression of a poet, "an eternal subject of discourse to every age. I shall not trace here the complete picture of that period of Greek history, so remarkable in every respect. It is my intention to occupy myself only with the part which was taken by the arts of imitation, in this great development of the human mind, but this very part was so considerable and so brilliant, that in restricting myself to briefly unfold here its principal effects, its principal causes, I shall present the greater and the better portion of the picture of Greek civilisation at that period: for in no age and among no people, were the arts so intimately linked with social organisation, in no other place did they act on society with such energy, nor did they receive in their turn so powerful an influence as among the Greeks, in the course of the ages to which we now turn our attention; and this was the first and the greatest cause of that superiority beyond all parallel, as well as beyond all