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HISTORY

OF

ANCIENT ART

BY
DR. FRANZ VON REBER

DIRECTOR OF THE BAVARIAN ROYAL AND STATE GALLERIES OF PAINTINGS
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY AND POLYTECHNIC OF MUNICH

Revised by the Author

_TRANSLATED AND AUGMENTED_

BY

JOSEPH THACHER CLARKE

WITH 310 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

_All rights reserved._


The application of the historic method to the study of the Fine Arts,
begun with imperfect means by Winckelmann one hundred and twenty years
ago, has been productive of the best results in our own days. It has
introduced order into a subject previously confused, disclosing the
natural progress of the arts, and the relations of the arts of the
different races by whom they have been successively practised. It has
also had the more important result of securing to the fine arts their
due place in the history of mankind as the chief record of various
stages of civilization, and as the most trustworthy expression of the
faith, the sentiments, and the emotions of past ages, and often even of
their institutions and modes of life. The recognition of the
significance of the fine arts in these respects is, indeed, as yet but
partial, and the historical study of art does not hold the place in the
scheme of liberal education which it is certain before long to attain.
One reason of this fact lies in the circumstance that few of the general
historical treatises on the fine arts that have been produced during the
last fifty years have been works of sufficient learning or judgment to
give them authority as satisfactory sources of instruction. Errors of
statement and vague speculations have abounded in them. The subject,
moreover, has been confused, especially in Germany, by the intrusion of
metaphysics into its domain, in the guise of a professed but spurious
science of aesthetics.

Under these conditions, a history of the fine arts that should state
correctly what is known concerning their works, and should treat their
various manifestations with intelligence and in just proportion, would
be of great value to the student. Such, within its limits as a manual
and for the period which it covers, is Dr. Reber's _History of Ancient
Art_. So far as I am aware, there is no compend of information on the
subject in any language so trustworthy and so judicious as this. It
serves equally well as an introduction to the study and as a treatise to
which the advanced student may refer with advantage to refresh his
knowledge of the outlines of any part of the field.

The work was originally published in 1871; but so rapid has been the
progress of discovery during the last ten years that, in order to bring
the book up to the requirements of the present time, a thorough revision
of it was needed, together with the addition of much new matter and many
new illustrations. This labor of revision and addition has been jointly
performed by the author and the translator, the latter having had the
advantage of doing the greater part of his work with the immediate
assistance of Dr. Reber himself, and of bringing to it fresh resources
of his own, the result of original study and investigation. The
translator having been absent from the country, engaged in archaeological
research, during the printing of the volume, the last revision and the
correction of the text have been in the hands of Professor William R.
Ware, of the School of Mines of Columbia College.

CHARLES ELIOT NORTON.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, _May_, 1882.


In view of the great confusion which results from an irregular
orthography of Greek proper names, a return to the original spelling of
words not fully Anglicized may need an explanation, but no apology: it
is only adopting a system already followed by scholars of the highest
standing. The Romans, until the advent of that second classical revival
in which the present century is still engaged, served as mediums for all
acquaintance with Hellenic civilization. They employed Greek names, with
certain alterations agreeable to the Latin tongue, blunting and
coarsening the delicate sounds of Greek speech, much in the same manner
as they debased the artistic forms of Greek architecture by a mechanical
system of design. The clear [Greek: on] became _um_, [Greek: os]
was changed to _us_, [Greek: ei] to _e_ or _i_, etc. This Latinized
nomenclature, like the Roman triglyph and Tuscan capital, was
exclusively adopted by the early Renaissance, until,