Greek couch
It is therefore to be expected that the sculpture of the day, though employed sometimes upon the decoration of thrones or state seats, chariots, chests, looking-glasses, tripods, as the painting was on walls, vases, and movable pictures on panels, should have been employed mostly in temples and, with occasional exceptions, on objects of some public use. The chest described above was kept as a relic, and the elaborately carved thrones in the temples were those of the statues of gods and heroes. Ivory and gold laid over a substructure of olive wood were the materials quite as frequently used by great sculptors as marble or bronze for statues which did not form parts of the actual decorations of their architecture. In later times these materials were used in sumptuous furniture.
chair
The Greeks used couches for sleeping and resting upon, but not for reclining on at meals, till the Macedonian period. We give two or three examples, from marbles: one of which resemblesthe modern sofa. Women sat always, as in Rome, sometimes on the couch at the head or foot, on which the master of the house or a guest reclined, generally on chairs. Besides chairs like the one represented here, the Greeks made arm-chairs; and folding chairs of metal. In the Parthenon frieze Jupiter is seated in a square seat on thick turned legs, with a round bar for a back, resting on short turned posts fitted into the seat. The arms are less high than the back; they are formed by slight bars framed into the uprights at the back, and resting on winged sphinxes.
Greek mirror
Mirrors of mixed metal alloys, silver, tin, and copper, have come down to our times in great numbers. They were made occasionally in pure silver, and in gold probably among the Greeks as they were in later times among the Romans. The cases are of bronze, and engraved with figure designs of the highest character. There is, however, no proof that these were used as furniture in houses, as in Rome. They are hand mirrors, and the description of them, as works of art, belongs rather tothat of antique bronzes. The woodcut shows the usual type, with the richly ornamented handle.
Designs of the Greek couch, whether for sleeping or for reclining at meals, are abundant on tomb paintings, and sculptures, and on the paintings of vases. In the British museum we may see a large vase in the second vase room, on which a couch for two persons is arranged with a long mattress covered with rich material, lying within what appears to be a border of short turned rails with a cushion on each end, also covered with rich striped material. A long low stool decorated with ivory lies below the couch as a kind of step. The legs, as in many vase representations, are thick turned supports with lighter parts below, and a turned knob at the foot. On another vase Dionysus reclines on a thick round cushion at the head of the couch, while Ariadne sits on it. Figures feasting or stretched in death on similar couches can be seen in two beautiful and perfect funeral chests in the Ægina room. All these pieces of furniture seem made of or decorated with ivory, and furnished with coloured cushions or coverings of an oriental character. Tripods were made of bronze in great number for sacred use, and probably also as the supports of brasiers, tables, &c., in private houses. The tables were of wood, marble, and metal; the supports being either lion or leopard legs and heads, or sphinxes with lifted wings, a favourite form in Greek ornamentation.
Greek chariot
With regard to Greek houses generally, their arrangements differed very little from the earlier houses of the Romans. The bas-relief in the British museum—Bacchus received as a guest by Icarus—represents a couch with turned legs, the feet of which are decorated with leaf work; a plain square stool, perhaps the topof a box, on which masks are laid, and a tripod table with lion legs. The houses in the background are tiled. The windows are divided into two lights by an upright mullion or column, and a bas-relief of a charioteer driving two horses ornaments a portion of the wall, and may be intended for a picture hung up or fixed against the wall. The whole shows us an Athenian house, decked for a festive occasion, and garlands and hangings are festooned round its outer walls.
The Greek chariot was of wood, probably similar to that of the Egyptians. It had sometimes wheels with four strong spokes only, as in the woodcut. The chariot wheel of the car of Mausolus, in the British museum, has six. The Ninevite wheels have sometimes as many as twelve, as may be seen in the sculptured bas-reliefs of the narrow Assyrian gallery of the British museum.
The woods used by the Greeks for sculpture were ebony, cypress, cedar, oak,smilax, yew, willow,lotus, and citron. These materials were rarely left without enrichments of ivory, gold, and colour. The faces of statues were painted vermilion, the dresses, crowns, or other ornaments were gilt or made in wrought gold.
THE ROMANS.
The splendour that surrounded the personal usages of the earlier races of antiquity, the Egyptians, Ninevites, Persians, Greeks, and Tuscans, was inherited by the Romans. Not only did they outlive those powers, but they absorbed their territory as far as they could reach it; they affected to take in their religions and deities to add to their own system; they drained the subject populations for slaves, and eagerly adopted from them every art that could administer to the magnificence and luxury of their own private life. They have left both written records in their literature and actual examples of their furniture, made in metal or of marble. The discovery of Herculaneum and of Pompeii has given us not only single pieces of furniture, but very considerable remains of houses, shops, streets, fora or open public places of assembly, theatres, and baths. It is in such evidences of Roman social life that we shall find the materials for our present inquiry.
The Romans spent their earlier ages in unceasing struggles for independence and dominion: and so long as the elder powers of Italy survived to dispute the growth of Roman greatness, there could not be much expansion of private wealth or splendour in the houses of Roman citizens. Though surrounded by splendid social life among the Etruscans, the Roman people long remained exceptionally simple in personal habits. It was after the Punic wars that oriental luxuries found their way into Italy along withthe Carthaginian armies. Tapestry is said to have been first brought to Rome by Attalus, the king of Pergamus, who diedB.C.133 possessed of immense wealth, and bequeathed tapestries, generally used in the east from the early ages, to the Roman citizens. When Augustus became emperor the conquest of the world was complete. Thenceforward military habits and simplicity of individual life were no longer necessary to a state that could find no political rivals. The great capital of the world absorbed like a vast vegetable growth the thought, the skill, and the luxuries of the whole world. Nothing was too valuable to be procured by the great Roman nobles or money-makers, and nothing too strange not to find a place and be welcome in one or other of their vast households.
While this was so at Rome in chief, it must be remembered that other capitals were flourishing in various countries, as wealthy, as luxurious in their own way and degree, only less in extent and means, and lacking that peculiar seal of supremacy that gives to the real capital a character that is never attained in subordinate centres of civilisation. Antioch was such a centre in the east; Alexandria in the south. Both these great cities contained wealthy, refined, and luxurious societies. Both were known as universities and seats of learning. Antioch was the most debauched and luxurious; Alexandria the most learned and refined. They did not exactly answer to the distinct capitals of modern kingdoms and states, such as we now see flourishing in Europe, to London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or St. Petersburg, because no one supreme state or city predominates over them; and further still, no one draws the pick and choice of the intellect and refinement of the whole of Europe to absorb them into itself as Rome did in the old world. But, in those days, Antioch and Alexandria, one at the head of the wealth and splendour of Asia, the other representing Greek learning grafted on the ancient scientific and artistic traditions of Egypt, must have contributed much to the generalfusion of "ideas" and notions on art and personal manners and customs in the capital of the Roman empire.
The Roman house was of traditional plan, and consisted generally of two or more square enclosures surrounded by arcades, open to the air in the centre, but which openings could be closed in summer or winter by awnings when the courts were not large enough to include a garden, as the inner enclosure usually did.
The house had in front avestibulum, an open space covered by a verandah-shaped roof, sometimes enclosed by lattices, sometimes open. Anostiumor lobby inside the entrance-door, deep enough to contain a small porter's lodge on one side, led to an inner door which opened on theatrium. This court had an opening to the air, and a tank for rain water was sunk in the middle. Fountains with jets or falls of water were not uncommon, the ancients being well acquainted with the principle that water if brought from an elevation in pipes will force its way up to its natural level.
Inside theatriumwas thenuptiale, the nuptial bed, and here were kept in earliest times thepenates, household or family divinities, and the family hearth, though these sacred emblems were banished in the imperial times to distant parts of the house, and statues between the columns that supported the central roof supplied their place. Theatriumwas the general reception-room, like the hall in mediæval houses, but not the dining-room. To this succeeded an inner open court, with porticoes or corridors running round, supported on columns, and with a fountain or basin, shrubs and flowers in the centre, like the courts of the Alhambra. This court provided four halls in the four corridors, which could be screened off by tapestries and curtains. The centre was shaded in summer by canvas or carpet awnings. In winter a wooden roof could be pushed over the open space. Between the two halls or courts was a chamber called thetriclinium, or dining-room. These rooms were roofed with timber richly painted and gilt. The roofs either hung on beams projectingfrom the walls, or were supported by pillars, or were carried up to a high opening, sloping back to the walls so as to admit more light to the rooms, alcoves, or screened portions furthest removed from the opening. Occasionally they were covered in wholly with a testudo-shaped roof, and in such cases lighted, perhaps, by dormers, though it is not quite clear how light was provided for in such constructions. Roman rooms were not floored with boards but paved with marble in large pieces, or in mosaic work made of small dies or squares. Coarse specimens of such work manufactured in our own times are laid down in the museum at Kensington, and fragments of the old work may be seen there on the walls. Occasionally these mosaics represent the house watch-dog chained, or the fable of Ganymede, or hunting scenes, sometimes finished with the utmost nicety. Thetricliniumtook its name from the three couches or sofas, on each of which three persons reclined during meals. Later, and in sumptuous palaces, several dining-rooms were built out beyond the inner courts. The engraving, a reconstruction, will give a fair idea of the general character of a richly furnished Romanhouse. First, is theatrium, into which smaller chambers open; next, thetriclinium, to the left of which is a cabinet; and beyond is theperistylium, with its lofty colonnades. This last apartment was large and open; often planted with shrubs and trees, or containing statues, flowers in pots and vases, and surrounded by a corridor. As these courts were of various sizes they were, no doubt, in Rome on a scale out of all proportion to those found at Pompeii; were fewer or more in number, and rooms were added as the proprietor could acquire ground for building, often a difficulty in the older parts of the city. Something of this ground plan survives in a few of the very ancient Roman churches, as in that of S. Pudenziana, formerly the house of the senator Pudens, with vestibules, open courts, &c.
Pompeian interior
Around the inner court, in the sumptuous Roman houses and the country villas of the patricians, were built other rooms, dining-halls, no longer calledtricliniumbuttricliniain the plural, as admitting more than the number of nine persons reclining on the conventional three couches, to dine at once. In the city itself room was probably wanting in private houses for such expansion, the houses being in streets already laid out. In the villas there was no such restriction. These halls were built to face different quarters of the compass and to be used according to the season.Vernaandautumnalislooked to the east,hybernato the west,æstivato the north.Œciwere other rooms still larger; and glass windows were to be found in them. In a painting now in the Kensington museum, no.653, given by the emperor Napoleon the third, glazed windows can be distinguished, divided by upright mullions and transoms of wood, such as were constructed in English houses in the seventeenth century. The sleeping-rooms,cubicula, were small closets rather than rooms, closed in general by curtains or hangings, and disposed about the sides of the rooms between the courts, or round the outer courts themselves.
Besides the living and sleeping chambers, there were store-roomsfor various kinds of food. Wearing apparel was kept investiaria, wardrobe rooms, fitted especially to store them in. It is doubtful whether the dresses were in chests: more probably in presses, or hanging on pegs.
The ornamental woodwork in some of these rooms was rich in the extreme. The outer vestibule was protected by an overhanging balcony or by the projecting rafters of the roof of the first portion of the house, according as rooms were built over that portion or not. It was in some instances enclosed by carved or trellised woodwork. The doors were generally in two halves and could be closed with locks, which in the age of the empire were thoroughly understood, with latchets secured by a pin or with a wooden bar. The termobserarewas used when the security of a bar was added. The hinge was a pin or peg at the top and bottom which turned in a socket. Metal hinges strapped over the wood frame were not unknown: and bronze hinges are in the collection of the British museum. The decoration of the door, which was of wood, consisted principally of bronze mounts. The doorposts were ornamented with carving, sometimes inlaid with tortoiseshell and other rich materials. The woodwork was painted. Bedrooms were closed with doors; oftener by curtains. The windows were generally closed with shutters, hinged and in pairs. They were some six feet six inches above the level of the street, not beyond reach of the knocks and signals of friends outside. Wooden benches were usually provided in the vestibule.
Besides the inlaid door frames, the ceilings of all the Roman rooms were very richly decorated. In more simple constructions the wood joists of the floor above, or the structure of the roof when no room surmounted it, were shown and painted; but in richer houses the timbers were covered with boards, and formed into coffers and panels, painted, gilt, and inlaid with ivory. This splendid system of decoration dates from the destruction of Carthage. Curved bearers from the upper part of the walls were added to form one kind of ceiling (camara), for which Vitruviusgives directions; and glass mosaics, like those used in the pavements, were inlaid on a plaster bed in the coffers. The cornices were of carved wood, or of plaster carved or modelled; the wood was always covered with a preparation of gesso, and gilt and painted like the walls.
Roman tripod
An examination of the remains of Roman glass found at Pompeii and elsewhere, and of which excellent examples may be studied in the Kensington museum, seems to point to the use not only of mosaics made of dies, but of mouldings, borders, and panels moulded in coloured glass of magnificent hues, and with the finest stamped ornaments. These were occasionally gilt, or were made in relief, or with a coat of opaque white glass over the translucent material, which could be cut and modelled in the manner of cameos, and helped further to decorate the ceiling, always one of the most splendid features of the room.
The walls, when not painted, were sometimes hung with mirrors of glass blackened, or of silver, or of slabs of obsidian. They were of various sizes, sometimes large enough to reflect persons at full length. In the case of portable pictures, frames were added round them. Borders were certainly painted round frescoes. It is not to be supposed that paintings which could be exposed for sale, moved about, and hung up, could be finished round otherwise than by ornamental mouldings, or framework sufficient to protect and properly set them off.
Among the ornamental pieces of furniture were tripods, three-legged frames, forming the supports of tables, of altars, of braziers, sometimes of pieces of sculpture. These were generally of bronze, and original pieces obtained in various parts of Italy can be seen in the bronze roomof the British museum. Some of these much exceed the height of high modern tables. They are light, and ornamented on the upper ends with animal or other heads; some with the beginning of a hind leg about halfway down. They were, however, frequently movable, and, like the piece in the cut on the preceding page from an example in the British museum, were made to contract by folding; the stays which connect the legs internally slipping up and down them by means of loops. Such pieces might serve as table legs, or would hold altar pans or common fire pans or support pots of flowers.
Roman candelabra
Besides tripods the reception rooms were ornamented with candelabra on tall stands of most graceful form and proportions. It will suffice to point to more than a dozen of examples in the British museum; and the woodcuts are from examples in other collections. The stems are a fluted staff or a light tree stem, commonly supported on three animal legs spread at the base, and branching out on the tops into one, two, or more boughs or hooks, with elegant modelled decorations or ending in flat stands.One has a slight rim round the dish or stand, on which a candelabrum or wax candlestick could be placed. In other cases the lamps were hung by their suspensory chains to the branches described. Other candelabra stands were of marble, six, eight, ten, or more feet in height, hybrid compositions of column caps, acanthus leaves and stems, on altar bases, &c., in great variety of design, of which engravings may be studied in the work ofPiranesi. Casts, n^{os.} 93, 94 (antiques), are in the South Kensington museum.
Roman candelabra
We do not know in what kind of repositories or pieces of furniture the ancient Romans kept their specimens of painting or their vases, some of which formed their most valued treasures. It is generally supposed that they were set on shelves fastened to the wall. On such shelves small images, boxes of alabaster or glass, and ornamental vases of all kinds were kept. Craters, sculptured vases on a large scale and made of bronze or marble, were also mounted on pedestals and ranged as ornaments with the statues. Bronzes and statues, pieces of sculpture that had fixed places, stood either along the walls of the reception rooms or under the eaves of thecompluvium, whence light was obtained to set them off to advantage, and where turf, flowers, and fountains were in front of them. A vase or crater, nearly eight feet high, is in the hall of the British museum, brought from the villa of Hadrian at Palestrina; and in the entrance-hall of Nero's house there was a colossus 120 feet high, and long arcades and a tank or basin of water. But objects on this scale scarcely belong to the descriptions of what might be found ordinarily in houses of the great patricians. Sometimes a couch and a table of marble were placed close to the fountains in these delightful portions of the house.
Tables were of many varieties in Rome, and enormous expenses were incurred in the purchase of choice pieces of such furniture. They were made of marble, gold, silver, bronze; were engraved, damascened, plated, and otherwise enriched with the precious metals; were of ivory, and of wood, and wood decorated with ivory; and in many other methods. Engraved (p. 26) is a very beautiful table found at Pompeii, and now at Naples. Tripods, terminal and other figures, made of bronze or marble; winged sphinxes, or leopards' and lions' legs, columns and other architectonic forms, were the supports on which these tables were fastened. Some had one central support only, ina few instances finished with animal heads of ivory.Abaciwere small tables with raised rims to hold valuables.
Roman table
Many tables were of cedar and on ivory feet. Horace speaks of maple, so also does Pliny, as a favourite wood for tables: birds'-eye maple especially was much prized. The planks and disks that could be cut from the roots and the boles of trees that had been either pollarded or otherwise dwarfed in growth in order to obtain wavy grain, knotted convolutions, &c., were in request. Veneers of well-mottled wood or of precious wood, small in scantling, were glued on pine, cedar, &c., as a base. These pollard heads, root pieces, &c., were bought at high prices, specially those of thecitrusorcedrus Atlantica.
The point held to be desirable (says Pliny) in the grain of tables was to have "veins arranged in waving lines or else forming spirals like so many little whirlpools. In the former arrangement the lines run in an oblong direction, for which reason they are calledtigrinæ, tiger tables. In the latter case they are calledpantherinæ, or panther tables. There are some with wavy, undulating marks, and which are more particularly esteemed if these resemble the eyes of a peacock."
Next in esteem to these was the veined wood covered or dotted, as it were, with dense masses of grain, for which reason such tables received the name ofapiatæ, parsley wood. But thecolour of the wood is the quality that was held in the highest esteem of all; that of wine mixed with honey was the most prized, the veins being peculiarly refulgent. The defect in that kind of table waslignum(dull log colour), a name given to the wood when common-looking, indistinct, with stains or flaws. The barbarous tribes, according to Pliny, buried the citrus wood in the ground while green, giving it first a coating of wax. When it came into the workman's hands it was put for a certain number of days beneath a heap of corn. By this process the wood lost weight. Sea-water was supposed to harden it, and to act as a preservative. This wood was carefully polished by hand-rubbing. As much as £9,000 (a million of sesterces) was paid for one table by Cicero. Of two that had belonged to king Juba, sold by auction, one fetched over £10,000. These were made of citrus (Thuya articulataorcedrus Atlantica). We hear of two made for king Ptolemæus of Mauritania, the property of Nomius, a freed man of Tiberius, formed out of two slices or sections of thecedrus Atlanticafour feet and a half in diameter, the largest known to Pliny; and of the destruction of a table, the property of the family of the Cethegi, valued at 1,400,000 sesterces.
Roman couch
Roman ceremonial chair
The Roman patricians and their ladies sat on chairs and reclined on couches when not at meals. In theatriumunder the broad roofed corridors, and in the halls not used for eating, were couches, such as the couch of which we give a woodcut, of bronze or of precious woods; the bronze damascened with ornaments ofthe precious metals, or of metal amalgam; the wood veneered or inlaid with marquetry or tarsia work of ivory, ebony, box, palm, birds'-eye maple, beech, and other woods.
The chairs were of different kinds and were used for various occasions. Theatriumcontained double seats, single seats, and benches to hold more than one sitter; chairs that either folded or were made in the form of folding chairs, such as could be carried about and placed in the chariot,curules. The woodcut shows the general fashion of a state or ceremonial chair; from the marble example in the Louvre.
This woodcut is of thesella, a seat or couch, made of wood, with turned legs; it is intended, probably, for one person only, and has no need of a footstool. It has been covered with a cushion.
Roman _sella_
Scamnumwas a bench or long seat of wood, used in poorer houses instead of the luxurioustricliniumof the men or arm-chairs of the women, for sitting at meals or other occasions. Seats were placed along the walls in theexedræor saloons; marble benches in most cases, sometimes wooden seats; particularly also in the alcoves that were constructed in the porticoes of baths and public buildings, where lectures of philosophers were listened to.
The Romans had hearths in certain rooms. Numerous passages in ancient writers, to which it is needless to refer, concur in showing that the hearth was a spot sacred to thelaresof the family, the altar of family life. It was occasionally made ofbricks or stone, and immovable, on which logs could be heaped. It seems doubtful whether chimneys were used in the Roman houses; probably occasionally. Writers on Roman antiquities speak of such rare constructions used, perhaps, as ventilators to the kitchen. The usual method of warming was by means of a brazier, of which an example found at Cære, in Etruria, is preserved in the British museum. It is a round dish on three animal legs, with swing handles for removing it. Another, square in form, is reproduced in a casting in the South Kensington museum collection, no.70, standing on animal legs and damascened round the sides with gold ornaments. The Romans had also kitchen braziers with contrivances for heating pans, water, wine, &c., by charcoal. No.71 at South Kensington is a casting of such a piece, having a round metal receptacle, like a small cask, on its end, and a raised horse-shoe frame, on which a pan could be placed, with fire space in the middle. These braziers were filled with charcoal heated thoroughly by the help of the bellows, to get rid of the noxious gases.
It has been said that the dresses of the Romans were preserved, as in mediæval castles, in a separate room or wardrobe, and this room must have been fitted with apparatus for hanging shelves and lockers. They had besides for keeping valuables, and usually placed in the sleeping-room of the master or mistress of the house, cupboards and chests of beech ornamented with metal, some large enough to contain a man. In these receptacles they conveyed their property to and from country houses, and on visits. Enormous numbers of slaves moved to and fro with the family, and the chests were carried on men's shoulders, or in waggons of various shape and make.
The most important action of the luxurious Roman day was the dinner. Couches were arranged for the guests, and the room was further provided with stools or low benches, side tables, and the movable table used for each course. These tables were put down and removed from the supports on which they stood. Theside tables were of marble or of wood, covered with silver plates, inlaid, veneered, and ornamented in various ways; some were used for serving the dishes, others for the display of plate.
Sculptured objects of plate, partly ornamental, were put on the table and removed with the courses. Petronius describes an ass of Corinthian bronze with silver paniers as the centre piece of one course; sauces dropped from the paniers on luscious morsels placed beneath. A hen of wood with eggs within and a figure of Vertumnus are also named by the same author as centre pieces. These were replaced on the sideboard or removed with the course in trays.
Closely connected with the dining-room was, it need scarcely be said, the kitchen; and we give woodcuts of kitchen utensils, from the originals preserved at Naples.
Roman kitchen utensils
Roman kitchen utensils
Mention should be made of tapestries and carpets before leaving the subject of Roman house furniture.
Carpets,tapete, blankets, or other woollen coverlids for sofas or beds, were made at Corinth, Miletus, and a number of seats of fine wool manufacture. It is too large a question to go into in detail, and woven fabrics belong to a different class of objects fully described in another hand-book, upon textiles. These tapestries played a great part in the actual divisions of the Roman rooms. Bedrooms, it has been said, were often closed with curtains only, and the corridors and smaller rooms were closed at the ends and made comfortable by the same means. At the dinner detailed by Petronius the hangings on thetricliniaare changed between pauses in the meal. The feelings consonant with the day or occasion were symbolized or carried out in these external decorations. Mention is made by Seneca of ceilings made so as to be moved, and portions turned by machinery; perhaps the changed panels showed different colours and decorations according to the day, and to the hangings which were used. The same author alludes to wood ceilings that could be raised higher or lower by machinery, "pegmata per se surgentiaet tabulatatacite in sublime crescentia," making no noise in the operation. These contrivances were reserved for dining-rooms, where the diversions were of the freest description and the guests prepared for any exciting or sensational interludes.
The Romans required some of their furniture for out-door use. Besides the curule chairs and lofty seats which were carried into theatres or baths, and other places of public resort, they used litters. The sofas or couches were sometimes carried on the necks of six or more slaves, and served as litters. But special contrivances like the Indian palanquins were made with or hung under poles, with curtains or shutters. Stations of such conveyances for public use were established in Rome.
The subjects of the carving and ornamentation of Roman furniture were the classic legends mainly derived from the Greek mythology. Roman house walls were, however, in later years profusely decorated with conventional representations of architecture,and panels richly coloured on which were painted figures of dancers, cupids, gods and heroes; sometimes commonplace landscapes and domestic scenes. Their solid furniture was decorated with masks, heads of heroes, legs and feet of animals, and foliage, generally the leaves of the acanthus, of an architectonic kind.
The great achievement of the Romans in woodwork of a constructive kind was the machinery contrived for public shows, such as the cages shot up out of the sand of the arena of amphitheatres, of which the sides fell down, leaving at liberty the beasts wanted for fights or for the execution of criminals. Of such constructions probably nothing in the middle ages, when timber abounded and the use of it was thoroughly understood, exceeds the following; a description by Pliny of a device of C. Curio, in Africa, when celebrating the funeral games in honour of his father:—
"He caused to be erected close together two theatres of very large dimensions and built of wood, each of them nicely poised, and turning on a pivot. Before mid-day a spectacle of games was exhibited in each, the theatres being turned back to back, in order that the noise of neither of them might interfere with what was going on in the other. Then, in the latter part of the day, all on a sudden, the two theatres were swung round and, the corners uniting, brought face to face; the outer frames too were removed (i.e.the backs of each hemicycle) and thus an amphitheatre was formed, in which combats of gladiators were presented to the view; men whose safety was almost less compromised than that of the Roman people in allowing itself to be thus whirled round from side to side."
The following woods were in use amongst the Romans:—
For carpentry and joiner's work,cedarwas the wood most in demand.Pineof different kinds was used for doors, panels, carriage building, and all work requiring to be joined up with glue, of which that wood is particularly retentive.Elmwasemployed for the framework of doors, lintels and sills, in which sockets were formed for the pins or hinges on which the doors turned. The hinge jambs were occasionally made ofolive.Ashwas employed for many purposes; that grown in Gaul was used in the construction of carriages on account of its extreme suppleness and pliancy. Axles and portions which were much morticed together were made ofIlex(Holm oak).Beechalso was in frequent use.Acer(Maple) was much prized, as has been already stated, for tables, on account of the beauty of the wood and of the finish which it admits.Osierswere in use for chairs as in our own times.Veneeringwas universal in wood furniture of a costly kind. The slices of wood were laid down with glue as in modern work, and they used tarsia or picture work of all kinds.Figwood,willow,plane,elm,ash,mulberry,cherry,cork wood, were amongst the materials for the bed or substance on which to lay such work. Wild and cultivatedolive,box,ebony(Corsican especially),ilex,beech, were adapted for veneering boxes, desks, and small work. Besides these, the Romans used the Syrianterebinth,maple,palm(cut across),holly,root of elder,poplar; horn, ivory plain and stained; tortoiseshell; and wood grained in imitation of various woods for veneering couches and other large pieces of furniture, as well as door frames, &c., so that this imitation of grains is not entirely a modern invention. Woods were soaked in water or buried under heaps of grain to season them; or steeped in oil of cedar to keep off the worms. Thecedarsof Crete, Africa, and Syria were the best of that class of timber. The bestfirtimber was obtained from the Jura range, from Corsica, Bithynia, Pontus, and Macedonia.
The Romans had admirable glue, and used planes, chisels, &c. Their saws, set in frames, had the teeth turned in opposite directions to open the seam in working.
There are some curious historical records of the endurance of particular wood structures. The cedar roof of the temple of Diana of Ephesus was intact at the end of four centuries inPliny's time. Her statue was black, supposed to be of ebony, but according to other authorities of vine, and had outlasted various rebuildings of the temple. The roof beams of the temple of Apollo at Utica were of cedar and had been laid 348 years before the foundation of Rome; nearly 1,200 years old in the time of Pliny, and still sound.
The emperor Philip celebrated the secular games (recurring every 100 years), with great pomp, for the fifth time in the year 248. We may consider this event, for our present purpose, as a convenient finish of the classic period of antique art, and of the reflections of it in the woodwork and furniture and the surroundings of private life.
Ten centuries had elapsed since Romulus had fortified the hills on the banks of the Tiber. "During the first four ages" (says Gibbon) "the Romans, in the laborious school of poverty, had acquired the virtues of war and government; by the vigorous exertion of these virtues, and by the assistance of fortune, they had obtained in the course of the three succeeding centuries an absolute empire over many countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The last three centuries had been consumed in apparent prosperity and internal decline."
BYZANTINE ART.
We may take as the next period for illustration the centuries that witnessed the break up of the old Roman constitution and the gradual formation of a new order of society down to the end of the first ten centuries of our era. Seven hundred and fifty years out of those ten hundred belong in great part to mediæval history. The misfortunes of Italy, and the incessant state of war, invasion, and struggle in that peninsula were too destructive of personal wealth and the means of showing it in costly furniture to leave us any materials from thence for our present subject. The history of furniture and woodwork, as applied to civil and social uses, now belongs to such civilisation as took its origin and its form from Constantinople. Art of these centuries is called Byzantine.
St. Peter's chair
The woodcut is from the chair of St. Peter in Rome, the oldest and most interesting relic of antique furniture in existence; that is, of furniture made of wood and kept in use from the days of ancient Rome. But it has had repairs and additions, and a description of it shall be referred to in another section.
Byzantine art is a debased form of the classic, but with a large mixture of Greek; not of the old classic Greek type which had long been exhausted, but of that Asiatic Greek which derived so much of its splendour from the rich but unimaginative decorations of Persia. The objects actually executed at Constantinople or by Byzantine artists now remaining can scarcely be included in a treatise on furniture. They are mostly caskets and other small pieces executed in metal or in ivory. Accounts of many interesting pieces of Byzantine sculpture will be found in the "Description of the ivories in the South Kensington museum." Amongst them the diptychs of the consuls are not only the most important, but the most interesting to a treatise on furniture, as we see in them consular seats and thrones of many varieties.
We may select amongst other examples the following, which can be studied in the museum or referred to in that work. For instance, no.368 (fully described in Mr. Maskell's "Ivories") is one leaf of a consular diptych of Anastasius Paulus Probus Sabinianus Pompeius. The consul is represented seated on a chair of very ornate character. It is like the old folding curule chairs of Rome, but with elements both of Greek and Egyptian ornamentation, such as belong to the massive marble seats, supported by lions or leopards, with the heads sculptured above the upper joint of the hind legs. In the mouths of these lions' heads are rings for the purpose of carrying the chair, and the top frame is ornamented with little panels and medallions containing winged masks and portrait heads of the consul and his family or of members of the imperial family. On each side of the seat are small winged figures of Victory standing on globes and holding circular tablets over their heads. These probably represent the front of the arms, and are supposed to have a bar stretching from the heads or the circular tablets to the back of the seat. This feature too is a continuation of types that are to be found on Greek vases and in the chairs of both Nineveh and Egypt. A low footstool with an embroidered cushion on it is under the feet of the consul, andanother cushion, also embroidered, covers the seat. This represents a chair of the sixth century.
A seat still more like the curule chair, but with a high back, is represented in another ivory, no.270, in the South Kensington collection. This piece is a plaque or tablet with a bas-relief of two apostles seated. The chairs are formed of two curved and recurved pieces each side, which are jointed together at the point of intersection. One pair of these pieces is prolonged and connected by straight cross-bars, and forms a back. Two dolphins, with the heads touching the low front pieces and the tails sloping up and connected with the back, form the arms. This belongs to the ninth century. The lyre back, a form not unknown in old Greek and thence adopted among Roman fashions, is also to be seen in chairs on ivories and in manuscripts. Round cushions were hung on the back, others covered the seat. These are seen also figured in the mosaics of Venice, and later of Monreale in Sicily which retained much of the Byzantine spirit. The art of Sicily continued longer subject to Constantinople than that of most of its Italian provinces, and Venice preserved her old traditions far into the period of the European revival of art.
The beds, as represented in manuscript illuminations, belong chiefly to religious compositions such as the Nativity, or visions appearing to saints in their sleep. They are couches in the old Roman form, or are supported on turned legs, from the frames of which valances hang down to the ground. Sometimes a curtain acts as a screen at the head or on one side, but testers are wanting.
Chariots and carriages of all sorts remained more or less Roman in type. There were a greater number of waggons or carriages for the conveyance of women and families than had been in use in ancient times. Christianity had materially altered the social position of women, and they appeared in public or moved about with their families without the restraints which in the old Roman society forbad their appearance in chariots and open carriages,and made the covered couch or closed litter the usual conveyance for ladies of rank in Rome. Several forms of chariots or carriages of this larger kind can be seen in the sculptures of the column of Theodosius in Constantinople.
The art and the domestic manners and customs that had been in fashion in Rome maintained themselves with some modifications in Constantinople. The life there was more showy and pompous, but it was free from the cruelties and the corruption of the elder society. It was founded on the profession of Christianity, and the numbers and magnificence of the religious hierarchy formed an important feature in the splendid social aspect of the Greek capital. The games of the circus, without the cruelties of gladiatorial combats, were maintained. Chariots were in constant use, much wealth was spent on their construction, and chariot races were kept up. Furniture, such as chairs, couches, chests, caskets, mirrors and articles of the toilet, was exceedingly rich. Gold and silver were probably more abundant in the great houses of Constantinople than they had been in Rome. As the barbarous races of the east and north encroached on the flourishing provinces of the Roman empire, constant immigration took place to Constantinople and the provinces still under its sway. Families brought with them such property as could be easily moved, gold of course and jewels; and, naturally, these precious materials were afterwards used for the decoration of their furniture and dress.
The ancient custom of reclining at meals had ceased. The guests sat on benches or chairs. At the same time the "triclinia aurea," or golden dining room, was still the title of the great hall of audience in the palace at Constantinople. The term only served to illustrate the jealous retention of the old forms and names by the emperors and patricians. The last branch of the ancient empire did little for the arts of painting and sculpture, though it long preserved the old traditions of art, gradually becoming more and more debased with every succeeding generation,whilst outward splendour was increased because of the greater quantity of the precious metals that had accumulated or been inherited during so many centuries.
The decay of art and skill in the old world was, however, counterbalanced by the rise of new societies, which were gradually being formed in various parts of the empire. These consisted partly of the races of Huns, Goths, Saxons, and others, who had invaded Italy and settled themselves in it, partly of the old municipal corporations, who defended their property and maintained their privileges in the great walled towns of Italy. The cities profited to a great extent by this infusion of new blood; and became the parents of the future provinces of Italy, so rich in genius and industry, so wealthy and powerful in peace and war. The most important of them was Venice, and it is in Venice that, in the later middle ages, we find the birthplace of most of the art with which the furniture and utensils of home and warlike use were so profusely decorated.
We point to Constantinople as the last stronghold of the old arts of the Roman period, but it is because it was from the Greeks that the new states borrowed their first notions of art. Nearly all the early art we meet with throughout the west in manuscripts and ivories bears a Byzantine character.
A remarkable piece of monumental furniture has survived from these early centuries of the Christian era, half Byzantine and half western in character, the chair of St. Maximian of Ravenna, preserved in the treasury at Ravenna, and engraved and described in the "Arts Somptuaires" of M. Du Sommerard. Ravenna was the portion of the empire that most intimately connected the east with the west. The domed churches of San Vitale, San Giovanni in Fonte, the tomb of Galla Placidia, the round church of Santa Maria, built by Theodoric, together with the great basilica of Saint Apollinare in Chiasse, and others of the Latin form, unite the characteristics of the eastern and western architecture. What is true of architecture can also be pronounced as to painting,sculpture, textile fabrics, and all decoration applied to objects, sacred or domestic, that were in daily use.
But events occurred in the declining state of the empire that went far to transfer what remained of art to northern Europe. The sect of the iconoclasts, or image-breakers, rose into power and authority under the emperor Leo the Isaurian, who published an edict in 726 condemnatory of the veneration and use of religious images and paintings. During a century this principle was at work, and it caused the destruction not only of innumerable antique statues, such as those defaced in the Parthenon of Athens, but the loss of vast quantities of ivory and wood sculpture and precious objects of all kinds. Many artists took refuge in western Europe, and were welcomed in the Rhenish provinces of the empire by Charlemagne.
How much ancient and domestic art in the form of bronze or other metal furniture, such as chairs, thrones, tripods, &c., whole or in fragments, survived the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. we cannot conjecture. Perhaps the royal palaces, or still more possibly the mosques which have been the banks and depositories of family treasures under Mahometan rule, may contain valuable bronzes, ivories, and carved wood, relics of the luxurious life of the latter days of the Greek empire, and such evidences may some day come to light. No doubt, however, much antique art and much that belonged to the first eight centuries of our era survived the ordinary shocks of time and war, only to be destroyed by the quiet semi-judicial action of a furious sect protected by imperial decrees, after the manner in which mediæval art suffered under the searching powers of fanatical government commissioners in our own country, in the sixteenth century.
It is to the impulse which the Lombard and Frankish monarchs gave to art in western and northern Europe by the protection of Greek refugee sculptors and artists that we should trace the beginnings of the northern school called Rhenish-Byzantine.
THE MIDDLE AGES.
We cannot easily determine on a date at which we can assign a beginning to mediæval art. It differs from the art that succeeded it in the sixteenth century in many respects, and from the late classic art that preceded it still more widely. That peculiar character which we call romantic enters into the art of mediæval times, as it does into the literature and manners of the same ages. It took a living form in the half religious institution of chivalry. The northern nations grew up under the leadership of monks quite as much as under that of kings. They lived in territories only partially cleared from forests, pushed their way forward to power pioneered by the great religious orders, and their world was one surrounded by opportunities of endless adventures. But this romantic standard, though it took its rise from the times in which the Christians carried their lives in their hands, under the persecuting emperors, did not pervade Europe for many centuries. Classic art, in its decay, still furnished both forms and symbols, such,e.g., as that of Orpheus, to the new societies, and the names of Jupiter, Mercury, and Saturn, have survived as the titles of days of the week. The two art traditions overlapped each other for a while. Mediævalism grew very gradually.
We have just said that Charlemagne welcomed Byzantine artists to the Rhine. It must be remembered, however, that the Roman empire had been firmly planted beyond the Alps, and that Gaul produced good Roman art in the second and third centuries.Architecture, sculpture, bronze casting, and the numberless appliances of daily life were completely Roman in many parts of France and Britain. The theatres and amphitheatres of Arles and Orange and the collections in various museums are enough to show how extended this character was. It was not till the old traditions had been much developed or modified by oriental influences that a thorough mediæval character of art was established in Italy, France, Germany, and England. To the last it remained semi-classic in Rome itself.
We can give reference to few specimens of household furniture or to woodwork of any kind before the eleventh century, with a great exception to be noticed presently. Ivories, in any form, belonging to these ages are rare. The best objects are Byzantine. Anglo-saxon ivories, though not unknown, are all but unique examples. Ivory was probably rarely employed for any objects of secular use, unless on mirror cases, combs, or the thrones of kings; on horns, caskets, sword hilts, and the like.
Metallurgy in the precious metals and in bronze, including the gilding of bronze, was probably the one art that survived the departure, if it had not even preceded the invasion, of the Romans in Britain. It is scarcely probable that tin and copper ores would have been sought for from Britain if manufactured ornaments of metal had not found their way in the first instance from this country to the south. Be that, however, as it may, the art of metallurgy survived the downfall of such architectural and sculpturesque skill as had been attained in England under Roman traditions; and that metal thrones, chairs, and other utensils were made here as in Gaul can hardly be doubted.
There is an interesting collection, lately bequeathed by Mr. Gibbs, of Saxon ornaments in gold, bronze, and bronze ornamented with gilding and enamel, in the South Kensington museum. These objects were dug up chiefly at Faversham, a village in Kent. Most of these antiquities arefibulæ, brooches, and buckles, or portions of horse trappings, bosses, &c., and not recognisable as parts ofbronze furniture, such as the chair of Dagobert. But it is difficult to examine these personal ornaments and not believe that during the Saxon occupation bronze thrones, tripods, mirrors, and other objects of household use were also made.