Fig. 9.Gothic Sunflower. From Christ’s College Chapel, Cambridge.
I have given this account of the patterns founded on the lotus, as we can almost from this distance of time take a bird’s-eye view of its rise in naturalism, its spread, dispersion, and its crystallization into conventional forms; also we can trace how the lotus patterns of Indian art have resulted, when accepted in Europe, in nothing but the rolling wave, carrying flower forms which no longer represent a lotus; and how the lotus bud and flower pattern has become in time the classical “egg and tongue;” which, however, may have resulted also from a combination of other motives.
Representations of animal forms are sometimes very remarkable in phases of naturalism. The few remains of Celtic art that have survived are entirely animal, or very nearly so. In their stone, gold, silver, and bronze work, and in illuminated MSS., we meet with only animal forms; never a flower or a leaf.
Besides the Indo-Chinese patterns in Celtic art, whichsuggest the Chinese lattice-work (so strongly insisted on by Semper as a constant motive), we also find in all their decorations compartments containing involved patterns of cords or strings knitted or plaited, suggesting the entrails of animals, which by these hunting people were consulted as being mysteriously prophetic of approaching events, especially success or failure in the chase, and impending warlike raids.[102]There is no other way of accounting for these designs, which are peculiar to the race, unless we believe they always represent snakes. (Pl.15.)
In England much that was characteristic of the style was lost as soon as the Saxons drove out the Celts, who carried it to Ireland, as may be seen in the Book of Kells, and the carving of the Harp of Tara, and the Celtic jewels in the Irish museums; but the interlacing patterns survived throughout Anglo-Saxon art, and were marvellously ingenious and beautiful; witness the Durham Book of St. Cuthbert.
We have no Celtic textiles remaining to us, unless some embroidery in the Marien-Kirche collection at Dantzic may be of that style and time. This is suggested by its altogether Indo-Chinese and very barbarous character;[103]and one of the coronation mantles in Bock’s “Kleinodien” is Runic in its peculiar serpent design.
See larger image
Illumination from the Lindisfarne Gospels, about A.D. 700
Pl. 16.Demeter, wearing decorated robes, holds a bunch of wheatSee larger image
Pl. 16.
Demeter. From a Greek Vase in the British Museum.
“Judging from their illuminated MSS.,” it is said, “the elements borrowed from textile art by the Celts are plaits, bows, zigzags, knots, geometrical figures in various symmetrically developed combinations, crosses, whorls, and lattice-work; next, those taken from metal work, such as spirals and nail-heads let into borders; thirdly, simple or composite zoomorphic forms, such as bodies ofsnakes, birds’ heads on long necks, lizards, dogs, dragons, and the like.”[104]They well understood how to make a pattern by the repetition of objects of any class.
Pl. 17.See larger image
Pl. 17.
1. Embroidery on a Greek Mantle, third centuryB.C., from the Tomb of the Seven Brothers, Crimea.2. Egyptian Painted and Embroidered Linen. The cone, the bead, the daisy, the wave, the lotus under water, are all shown on this fragment.
Pl. 18.Designs include human and animal forms, floral and repeat patternsSee larger image
Pl. 18.
Egyptian Tapestry.
1. Woven and embroidered on a Sleeve. 2. Woven and embroidered. 3. Painted and embroidered.
Representations of human figures in embroideries probably originated in hangings for the wall; but have been treated as decorative forms, both by the Indians and the Greeks, for wearing apparel. The peplos of Minerva was bordered with fighting gods and giants, and the Empress Theodora’s dress in the Ravenna mosaic repeats exactly the same motive. (See Fig.4, and Pl.6.)
There are two other examples of such Greek patterns. The mantle of Demeter on a Greek vase in the British Museum, of the best period (Pl.16), is embroidered with flying genii and victorious chariots; and the embroidered mantle lately found in a Crimean tomb, is of precisely the same style of design, and the one illustrates the other. These instances are so exceptional, that it is curious that here, as in the case of the peplos, in each case there should happen to be a duplicate. (Plates16and17, No. 1.)
In Babylonian, Assyrian, and Chaldean art we constantly find animal forms in patterns. The lion and the hare, birds and insects, are the commonest; and there are some instances of human figures reduced to a pattern in these sculptured representations of textiles. (Plate2.)
There are curiously woven little human figures finished with the needle on the sleeve of an Egyptian dress in the British Museum, from Saccarah (Pl.18), and, of course, when such a design is small, it ceases to be very objectionable. On the whole, however, naturalistic designs for embroideries are more safely confined to floral decorations, excepting always flat tapestries for walls, which, representing pictures, may be as naturalistic as their purpose and style will admit.
Animal forms are often reduced to patterns byrepetition in Indian and Persian embroidery.[105]The drawing is naturalistic, but the colouring is fanciful. We may see any day, on Persian rugs, scarlet lions pursuing and capturing blue or yellow hares. The flatness and want of all shadows tends to the conventional. Lions, bulls, cats, beetles, and serpents abound especially in Egyptian design; insects, reptiles, and fish in Asiatic patterns, where animals are sometimes made to walk in pairs, with their heads and tails twisted into a pattern.
Though landscapes are so rarely worked that the subject is, perhaps, hardly worthy of notice, yet such mistaken specimens of ingenuity have occurred. An altar frontal was exhibited at Zurich, in 1883, containing some really exquisitely worked landscapes, which were quite out of place, both as art and as decoration, for an ecclesiastical purpose. This was of the beginning of the last century.[106]
While we appreciate and should take advantage of our national tendency to naturalistic design, we must beware of looking on fixed rules as bonds which cramp our liberty, and of thinking that nature should be our only guide to an otherwise unassisted and unfettered inspiration. Without the wholesome checks of experience and educated taste, and the knowledge which teaches us what to avoid, as well as what to imitate, founded on the successes and failures of others, we fall into weak imitations of natural objects.
Mr. Redgrave points out how unpleasant and jarring to our sense of what is appropriate, and therefore how offensive to good taste and common sense, it is to tread on a carpet of water-lilies swimming in blue pools, or on fruits and flowers heaped up and casting shadows probably towards the light.[107]Woollen lions and tigers, as large as life, basking before the fire in a wreath of roses, are alarming rather than agreeable, and are of the nature of a practical joke in art. It is the search for novelty in naturalism that leads to such astonishing compositions; and these, being successively rejected in the heart of our civilization and culture, are drifted away to vulgarize our colonies, or to be sold cheap to furnish Continental hotels, and make the English traveller blush for his home manufactures.
Though it is true that the highest art, pictorial and sculptural, is always struggling towards naturalism, the art of decoration is, by its nature, constantly tending to conventionalism. Patterns, if not absolutely geometrical or naturalistic, must be classed under this principle. Let us examine what is meant by a conventional pattern.
It may be said that the conventional includes every form—the symbolic, the naturalistic, or even the hieroglyphic—that is selected and consecrated to convey a certain idea. The lily of Florence, which is something between a lily and an iris, but unlike either, is a conventional form; likewise the lily of France, which it is said was once a conventional frog. The rose of England, the shamrock, and the thistle have always been more naturalistic than is usual in such heraldic designs; butthe parti-coloured rose of York and Lancaster was decidedly conventional, and heraldic.
Conventional patterns now are those which, having been originally naturalistic in style, but perhaps emblematic as to their motive, have been repeated till the meaning and form have been lost; or else, as in the case of the lotus, the emblem is forgotten, and nothing remains but the recognized conventional form.
One conventional pattern which, having commenced by being a symbol, has been repeated and varied till it has allowed the original essential meaning to escape, is the “palm-leaf” or “cone” pattern on French or Paisley shawls, which, having been a sacred emblem—the tree of life—in Persia, became in Europe, when the religious myth was lost, only a shawl pattern—merely a leaf, with plant painted within its outlines. (Plate23, Nos. 10, 11.)
Decorative designs become conventional in spite of the intention of the designer. He is overruled by the spaces to be covered and the materials to be employed. His design must produce a flat pattern; he must repeat it again and again; he must give it a strong outline; he must distribute it regularly at certain intervals. Repetition at once conventionalizes the most naturalistic drawing, and the most sacred and mysterious emblem. Alternation is equally a source of conventionalism. There is no motive that cannot be conventionalized into a pattern by repetition. A Gothic crown and a true lily, repeated, will make an ecclesiastical conventional pattern. Then come all the Arabian and Moresque forms (which are mostly geometric), and also the Gothic (which are partly geometric and partly naturalistic, especially those in German and debased Spanish and Portuguese Gothic design).
Pl. 19.See larger image
Pl. 19.
1. Key Pattern. 2. Broken-up Key. 3. Beads. 4. Key and sign of Land. 5. Wave and Babylonian Daisy. 6. Key and Fundata. 7. Wave and Bead. 8. Wave and Daisy. 9. Key and Sun Cross. These Key Patterns from Ceiling of a Tomb at Saccarah, in Egypt. (Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians.”)
Then we must accept as conventional all those which may be called kaleidoscope patterns, which are brokenfragments of old motives, repeated or “radiated” so as to become partly geometrical, wholly conventional. (See Pl.17, No. 2.)
Conventional patterns may be reduced into three kinds.
First, the naturalistic, which have by repetition been adapted for decorative art.
Secondly, the symbolical—Pagan or Christian, religious or historical, including the Heraldic.
Thirdly, those conventional forms which may never have had any inner meaning, or else, having originally had one, have lost it.
All these exist, sometimes apart and sometimes mingled; so that some thought must be expended in seeking the motive which has brought them together, and finding in each the internal evidence of its descent.
It is evident that patterns, conventionalized and brought from distant sources, sometimes meet and amalgamate. When the origin of a conventional pattern is disputed, it is worth while to examine if it has a double parentage. Let me give, as an instance, the key pattern. It may have been, as Semper believes, originally Chinese, and derived from wicker-work design. It represents also the broken or dislocated “wave,” the symbol of the River Mæander,[108]and for water generally. We find it everywhere in company with the wave, which never could have had any connection with wicker-work, not only in China, but in Persia, India, Egypt, Arabia, Greece, Rome, and Central America. (Pl.19.)
Can any invention of man show a more symbolical intention than the wave pattern? The airy leap drawn downwards by the force of gravitation; controlled, andagain made to return, but strong to insist on its own curve of predilection, rushing back under the same circle; strengthened by the downward movement to spring again from its original plane; beginning afresh its Sisyphus labour, and facing the next effort with the same grace and agility. Undying force, and eternal flowing unrest—these are the evident intention and symbol of the wave pattern. Though I believe the key pattern to be a modification of the wave form, yet the locking and unlocking movement suggests a repetition of the Tau, or key of life.
Wave patternFig. 10.
When we admire the friezes of garlands hung between the skulls of oxen and goats, we cannot for a moment doubt the sacrificial idea on which the design was founded. When the wreaths are carried by dancing children, we recognize the impersonation of the rejoicing of the dædal earth.
The Greeks, however strongly they exerted themselves to throw off the shackles of conventionality in sculpture, painting, and architecture, yet yielded to the traditional force of the symbolical pattern, and accepted most of the Oriental forms, merely remodelling them for their own use, and adding to their significance what their culture required; at the same time giving infinite variety, as their perfect taste dictated.
Pl. 20.See larger image
Pl. 20.
Trees of Life.
1, 2, 3, 5. Assyrian. 4. Sicilian Silk. (Birdwood’s “Indian Arts,” pp. 331, 335, 336, 337.)
Aristophanes, in “The Frogs,” laughs at the Persian carpet patterns—their unnatural birds and beasts and flowers—whilst he claims for his own frogs, that they at least have the merit of being natural.[109]This little touchof art throws a gleam of inner light on the struggle towards originality and truth which characterized the Greek principles of beauty and fitness in literature and art, in direct contrast to that which was always turning back to those fossil forms which were only respectable on account of their age and their mystery, but of which the tradition and intention were already lost.
Roman patterns were merely Greek adaptations with an Etruscan flavour, which was a survival of the earliest Italian art. Perhaps the indigenous element had been already modified by Phœnician influence.
In taking stock of Oriental symbolical patterns, we find that one of those of the widest ancestry and longest continuity is the “Sacred Hom.”[110](Pl.20-24.) This is to be found in Babylonian, Persian,[111]Indian, Greek, and Roman art; and consequently it prevails in all European decoration (except the Gothic), where it was reduced to unrecognizable forms.
Sir George Birdwood says the Hom or Homa was the Sanskrit Soma, used as an intoxicating drink by the early Brahmins, and was extracted from the plant of that name, an almost leafless succulent Asclepiad. It appears to have changed its conventional form as other plants by fermentation came to the front, containing what appeared to be the “spirit of life”—theaqua vitæ.
The palm, with its wonderful fruit, which is convertible into intoxicating drinks, and afterwards the vine itself, were each of them moulded into analogous conventional fruit forms, which keep as much as possible within the limits of the original cone shape. (Pl.21.)
Pl. 21.See larger image
Pl. 21.
1. Tree of Life and Lions. Gate of Mycenæ. 2. Persian or Sicilian Silk. Tree of Life and Leopards.
Pl. 22.See larger image
Pl. 22.
1. Split Lotus Fruit on Chinese Bowl. 2. Split Lotus resembling Tree of Life. Frieze by Benozzo Gozzoli, Ricardi Palace, Florence. 3. Petal of Flower on Glass Bowl from Southern Italy. British Museum.
There is a palm-tree which absolutely carries a cone in the heart of its crown of fronds.[112]This may have helped to preserve the original motive of the sacred tree of life. The cone form in classical art was drawn from the pine cone and the artichoke; and in mediæval art these were sometimes replaced by the pomegranate, and in the late Renaissance by the pine-apple, newly arrived from the West Indies.[113]It is a good example of the blending of one vegetable form into another, making the sequence, of which each phase in the East had an historical cause or a symbolical meaning,[114]but which in Europe had gradually lost all motive, and was simply anacknowledged decorative form.[115]In architectural ornament it is called the honeysuckle,[116]which it had grown to resemble in the days of Greece.
Pl. 23.See larger image
Pl. 23.
Different forms of Tree of Life, from Sicilian Silks.
Pl. 24.
Pl. 24.
Modern Embroidery from the Principalities, in which the cone-shaped tree grows into a vine,and the two animals at the foot have lost their shape and intention.
This sacred tree, the Homa of Zoroaster and of the later Persians, has so early a beginning that we find it on Assyrian monuments.[117]Rock says “that, perhaps, it stood for the tree of life, which grew in Paradise.” It is represented as a subject of homage to men and animals, and it invariably stands between priests and kings, or beasts kneeling to it. It is figured on the small bucket for religious rites, carried in the hands, or embroidered in the upper sleeve of the monarch’s tunic. It always represents a shrub, sometimes bearing a series of umbels of seven flowers each. (Pl.2,20.)
Sometimes the expression of the symbol is reduced to the cone-fruit of the homa alone; or even to a blossom, as in the two glass bowls in the Slade collection in the British Museum, from a tomb at Chiusi, in Etruria. Here the design is a flower, of which each petal contains the essential emblem—a plant within a plant. These bowls, pronounced to be Greek of the fourth centuryB.C., have yet to me a strong Oriental character. (Pl.22, No. 3.)
I have spoken of the lotus as a naturalistic pattern. One mode of drawing and embroidering its flower in India, is to cut it in two; half the blossom is then carefully and almost botanically copied, thus conveying the inner meaning of the sacred flower. (Pl.22, No. 3.)
Another conventional pattern, common to all times of art and all nations, is that called in architecture the “egg and tongue” pattern. (Pl.13.) This, as I have already said, is supposed to be derived directly from the lotus. The Egyptians formed it from the bud and blossom; and the pattern is found in India, Greece, and Rome, changing continually and yet retaining its identity. Vitruvius claimed to have given it the last touch and finish, so that in Italy it was called the Vitruvian scroll; and it is common to all decoration, even in textiles, though it is hardly suited for weaving or embroidery. This is one of the earliest patterns which, having ceased long ago to be a religious emblem or sign, still survives by its decorative fitness, and perpetuates the echoes of its origin.
Pl. 25.See larger image
Pl. 25.
Typical Crosses.
1. Swastika. 2. From a Greek Vase, 765B.C.3. Indian Sectarial Mark of Sakti race. 4. Buddhist and Jainis mark. 5. Early Rhodian Pottery. 6. Egyptian prehistoric Cross. 7. Tau Cross. 8. Mark of land, Egyptian and Ninevite. 9. Ditto. 10. Clavus. 11, 12, 13. Scandinavian Sun and Moon Crosses. 14, 15, 16. Celtic. 17. Chrysoclavus. 18, 19. Stauracin patterns. 20. Scandinavian, from Norway. 21. Runic Cross. 22. Cross at Palenque, in Temple of the Sun. 23. Scotch Celtic Cross. 24. Cross from Iona. 25, 26. Runic Crosses. 27. Cross on the Dalmatic of Charlemagne. 28. From the Mantle of Henry II., Emperor of Germany.
Of the conventional symbolical forms of the early Christian Church I shall speak more fully in the chapter onecclesiastical art, and therefore would only point out here, while touching on symbolical decoration, how that phase of Christian art is a great historical instance of the deep ancient meanings it illustrates; showing the motive to be often in accordance with the inherited pagan symbol, and yet differing from it. Pre-eminent among these is the emblem of the Cross, so early and universally used, full of mysterious secret allusions to the groping faiths of idolatrous nations, before the great fundamental idea of the “Word” was attached to it. This was one of the old signs used as a pattern, and transfigured into a fresh type, of which the radiance reflected back light upon all that preceded it, even asChinese ancestors are ennobled by the deeds of their descendants.
Pl. 26.See larger image
Pl. 26.
1. Pallas Athene, from a vase in Lord Northampton’s Collection. 2. Ajax in a cloak embroidered with swastika, sun cross, and prehistoric water patterns. Etruscan Museum. Vatican.
The cross (Pl.25), was a sign and a pattern in prehistoric art. It was the double of the Tau, the Egyptian emblem of life; and while the Jews reject the Christian cross, they still claim to have warned off the destroying angel by this sign in blood over the lintels of their doors in the first Passover.
But the most ancient and universal form of the cross is that of the Swastika, or Fylfote. This “prehistoric cross” is said to be formed of two fire-sticks, belonging to the ancient worship of the sun, laid across each other ready for friction; but losing that meaning, from an emblem they fell into a pattern, and this you will still find, utterly meaningless, on Persian carpets of to-day.
Sir G. Birdwood gives the Swastika as the sectarial mark of the Sakti sects in India. Fergusson names it with the mound buildings, as belonging to all Buddhist art; and examples of the Swastika are to be found on Rhodian pottery from the Necropolis of Kamiros, where we find also the key pattern.
In early Greek art the Swastika and Gammadion are everywhere, especially as embroidery on dress. Minerva’s petticoats are sometimes worked all over with the latter. On an early Greek vase in the Museo Gregoriano, are painted Ajax and Achilles playing at dice; and the mantle of Ajax is squared into an embroidered pattern that alternately represents a sun or star and a Gammadion (Pl.26, No. 2). But it is unnecessary to multiply classical examples, which are endless.
The Christian Cross was often formed by converting the Tau into the Gamma, the sacred letter of the Greeks. It is said to have been the emblem of the corner-stone, and as a pattern, was called, down to the thirteenth century, the “Gammadion;” and though it had lost itsoriginal motive, it continued to preserve the idea of a secret and mystical meaning.
The Gammadion, as well as the Swastika, enters largely into the illuminations of the Celtic Book of Kells and those of the Lindisfarne MSS.; also it is to be found on the Celtic shields in the British Museum, together with the Swastika. Both appear in the Persian carpets of to-day, and as patterns were, in ecclesiastical decoration, employed down to the fifteenth century, both for European and British textiles. The Swastika, as well as the wave pattern, is of mysterious and universal antiquity, and has certainly traversed four thousand years,—how much more we dare not say. It is to be found throughout Egyptian and Indian art—never in that of Assyria.
Of the time of Rameses the Second we have two figures in a mural painting, an ally and an enemy, a guest and a prisoner, both clothed in embroidered garments,parseméswith the prehistoric cross.
Two men, facing away from each other
Fig. 11.Egyptian Enemy and Ally.
In the chapter onecclesiastical artI shall again refer to this immemorial symbolical and conventional pattern. I much regret that, in the absence of a translation, I am prevented from availing myself of the accumulated learning on the subject of “The Prehistoric Cross,” by Baron Ernest de Bunsen.
Pl. 27.
Pl. 27.
Imitation of a Carpet carved in stone, from Nineveh, showing the Indian Lotus and the Assyrian Daisy. (In the British Museum.)
There was a pattern called the “crenelated” which apparently was derived from the Assyrian battlement, and is found throughout classic art, somewhat conventionalized.[118]It is named as an embroidered pattern in the inscription recording votive offerings of dresses in the temple of Athene at Athens.[119]
Fig. 12.Crenelated Pattern.
We know something of the conventional and symbolical embroideries of Nineveh, which are quite unlike those of India, except in the adoption of the lotus for decoration.[120]These are best understood by illustrations; and, therefore, I give one of the beautiful sculptured carpets from Nineveh, in the British Museum (Pl.27), showing the Assyrian use of the lotus and cone, and the embroidered garment of a king from one of the sculptures in low relief (Plate1). These are very stately—perfectly conventional and decorative; and we feel that they have grown where we find them, and are not borrowed from another civilization. What strikes us most, is the constant repetition and the little variety of ornament in these patterns. The forms are strongly marked—wheels or whorls, or daisies, often repeated. (The daisy belongs to Assyria as the lotus to Egypt.) The flowers are simply leafless blossoms. Splendid embroideries of sacred emblematical designs are, however, occasionally found, such as those from Layard’s “Monuments” (Plate2).
Much has been written on the early symbolism of plants and flowers. The sun-myths have enlisted all floral legendary lore, and conventional ornament was largely drawn from them.
Many symbols are present to us when we name certain plants. The lily is the acknowledged sign of purity, the rose of love, the honeysuckle of enduringfaith, the laurel of poetry, and the palm of victory; the oak of strength, the olive of peace. Some plants have accumulated more than one meaning. The vine has many attributes. It is an emblem of the mysteries of the Christian Church. It symbolizes plenty, joy, the family. Ivy means friendship, conviviality, remembrance.
The symbolism of beasts (bestiaria),[121]of birds (volucraria), and of stones (lapidaria) filled many volumes in the mediæval ages, and are well worthy of the study of the decorative artist. The symbolism of animals and birds especially, constantly attracts our attention in the Oriental and Sicilian textiles of the early Christian times, and to the end of the thirteenth century. Later, in European textile decoration, most animals were accepted as emblematic in Christian art, beginning with the symbols of the four Evangelists. All the virtues and all the vices found their animal emblems conventionalized, and were thus woven, embroidered, and painted.[122]
Reptiles and insects are included under the head of “beasts,” and perhaps fishes also. Each was dowered with a symbolical meaning; and thus admitted into art, they were conventionalized by being strongly outlined, coloured flat; and by repetition without variation, were converted into patterns.
Pl. 28.Four different patternsSee larger image
Pl. 28.
1, 2. Gothic Tiles. 3. Gothic Border of a Dress. 4. Gothic Vine. Westminster Abbey.
When the use of heraldic illustration was added to the already accepted symbolism, animal decoration became very common, and soon forgot its symbolical motives, which were succeeded by Renaissance fanciful patterns; and then the conventionalized beast and its symbolismdisappeared from European decoration, except when it was a direct copy of an Oriental design.
Certain symbolical forms have, however, survived. The eagle has always meant empire, and the double-headed eagle, a double royalty.[123]Ezekiel represents Babylon and Egypt, symbolically, as two eagles.[124]But here we approach the subject of heraldry, which became a science in mediæval days; and every man and woman in any way remarkable, every chivalrous action and national event, became a subject for textile art, and was woven or worked with the needle on banner, hanging, or dress. The altar decorations received a new stimulus as historical records, as well as religious symbols, and pride and piety were equally enlisted in these gifts to the Church.
Byzantine patterns have a barbaric stamp, and yet have much of the grandiose about them; but they are to the last degree conventional. In the early mosaics, both in Constantinople and Rome, every face and head, every flower and animal, represents a type and not an individual.
Fig. 13.Gothic Trees, from Bayeux tapestry.
Gothic foliage patterns, in England and elsewhere,are a struggle between the naturalistic and the conventional. The Norman style and the Romanesque, which preceded it, and from which it was modified and elevated, show their vegetable forms thick-stemmed and few-leaved, whereas the Gothic aspired to a developed gracefulness; and the Renaissance, which succeeded it, assumed all the freedom of natural flowers and plants, floating in the breeze, on their delicate stems. (Pl.28.)
All the Renaissance patterns, which, as their name denotes, were born again, like butterflies to frolic for a day of gay enjoyment, are purely decorative. Their generally charming, graceful forms group together to cover empty spaces with every regard to the rules of design and composition, but without any inner meaning. If we take these arabesques to pieces, we generally find the parts come from various sources; and having served last in pagan Rome for pagan purposes, had been slightly refashioned for Christian decorative art,[125]before the Byzantine inartistic taste, and barbaric splendour of metal-work patterns, had extinguished all the gay fancy of the arts of Southern Europe.
The mediæval revival was a return to the light and fantastic, and a protest against the solemnity of all Gothic art, which had had its great day, had culminated, and died out. The patterns of the Renaissance are all guided by the principles of repetition and duplication, or that of doubling the pattern, which repeats itself to right and left, as if folded down the middle.
The principal lines thus echoed one another; but the artist was permitted to vary the conventionalism of the general forms of figures, flowers, fruit, or butterflies, so as to balance and yet differ in every detail.
Pl. 29.See larger image
Pl. 29.
Cloud Patterns.
1, 2, 3, 7. Japanese. 4. Chinese. 5, 8, 9. Mediæval. 6. Badge of Richard II.
Pl. 30.Intricate design including foliage, flowers, birds and animalsSee larger image
Pl. 30.
Indo-Chinese Coverlet, supposed to have belonged to Oliver Cromwell. Hatfield House.
Amongst the conventional patterns which have descended to us, and are in general use without anyparticular symbolical meaning being attached to them, we must instance those derived from the Cloud pattern. This is to be found in early Chinese and Indian art, but I do not recognize it in Egyptian or Greek decoration. It came through Byzantium, and took its place amongst early Christian patterns. (Pl.29.)
Pl. 31.See larger image
Pl. 31.
The Fundata or Netted Pattern.
Portion of a Phœnician Bowl from Cyprus.Egyptian.Egyptian.Egyptian.
The cloud pattern is also Japanese, and is supposed to have been originally derived from Central Asia. It varies in shape, and is found as an ornament on the head of the sceptre in the collection at Nara, in Japan, which is twelve or thirteen hundred years old. There is an example of the cloud pattern in Aelfled’s embroidery at Durham; and it is often found under the feet of saints in painted glass and embroideries before the fourteenth century. A curious Indian example exists in a coverlet belonging to the Marquis of Salisbury, said to have been the property of Oliver Cromwell, on which the central medallion is filled with white horses careering amidst the cloud pattern.[126](Pl.30.)
Thenettedpattern called Fundata is extremely ancient. We find it in Egyptian mural paintings, as well as in the centre of a Phœnician bowl from Cyprus, now in the Louvre. The mediæval Fundata was a silk material, covered with what appeared to be a gold network covering the stuff. It is supposed to be the same as that worn by Constantine,[127]and is named in ecclesiastical inventories as late as the fifteenth century. (Pl.31.)
All the wheel patterns are very ancient, and appear to be simply conventional wheels. In France they were calledroés. There is a fine instance of this wheel pattern in Auberville’s “Tissus.” The wheels sometime enclose triumphal cars and other pictorial subjects. (Pl.34.)
The patterns which are apparently composed with the intention of avoiding all meaning, are the Moorish. They are neither animal, vegetable, nor anything else. They show no motive in their complicated domes, their honeycombing, and their ingenious conventional forms; but cover equally textile fabrics or stucco ceilings without suggesting any idea, religious or symbolical.
All the splendid Italian brocades and velvet damasks were of conventional patterns, and like their Arab and Sicilian models, and also like their Spanish contemporaries, represented, and sought to represent nothing on earth. It was all floreated and meandering design; the motive reminding one of the pine-apple and the acanthus, or of vine stems meeting or parting, but never anything naturalistic for a moment. When animals were introduced it was always as a pattern doubled face to face, as if folded down a straight line.
We may say the same of the succeeding Louis Quatorze and the Louis Quinze styles, which were of the culminating period of clever and fantastic conventional decoration.
Our modern designs have phases of imitation, and the patterns of rich brocades which our great-grandmotherswore, came into fashion again about the third decade of this century. Now we have been trying to find our inspirations further back, and some of our copies of the simpler Sicilian patterns, with an occasional pair of birds, or a conventional plant, imitating the motive of the tree of life, have been very pretty. The only defect is the poverty which results from the absence of any active and informing motive. It is, however, easier to criticize than to create.