The Roman ladies were less sparing of ornament, but even they did not load themselves with gold trinkets of every description after the Oriental and Etruscan fashion. Much of this Roman jewelry was of very beautiful design, and has been most conscientiously imitated by Castellani.
With regard to the fashion of wearing the hair and beard, it is certain that up to the third century B.C., the Romans wore their hair long and did not shave.
If, therefore, you have to paint any subject of the time of the kings, it would be incorrect to represent your personages with cropped hair and clean shaven, as though they were Romans of the later Consulate and Augustan age.
Some Sicilian barbers, who came over to Rome about the beginning of the third century B.C., introduced the custom of shaving and having the hair cut short, and this custom continued without intermission until the time of Hadrian or Trajan, when beards came into fashion again. The Sybarites, of a later period than this, used to oil their hair and sprinkle it with gold-dust. Wigs were also worn, by men as well as by women. If the emperor of the time happened to have a crop of thick curly hair, it was astonishing what a number of curly crops of hair suddenly appeared in Rome. Perhaps we need not go as far back as ancient Rome for phenomena of this kind. It is needless for me to describe the stiff, tasteless style of hair-dressing which prevailed amongst the ladies of the later Empire. It was their uncouth artificial coiffures which were imitated in France and England about the beginning of the century. It was this pseudo-classical style both of hair-dressing and apparel which made our grandmothers and great-grandmothers such unlovable objects.
A real classical revival after the puff and powder of the preceding generation, a return to the best Greek and Roman fashions, would have been a great blessing both to society in general and to the arts especially; but such classicism as prevailed under the first Napoleon was hardly an improvement on the perruques and pig-tails that preceded it.
The Roman military dress is so well known from the bas-reliefs of the times of Trajan, Hadrian, and Vespasian, that I need not go into any details respecting it. The only remark I would make is, that the linen drawers we see indicated in the sculptures, were not worn in the army before the wars of Gaul and Germany.
The dresses of the time of Constantine and his successors are very little known.
To some artists this is rather an attraction, as affording an opportunity of invention in costume, which is denied to them in a better known period; and it must be admitted that, provided they keep to what was likely to have been worn, no one can prove them to be wrong.
There are a few coins and medals in existence which give some idea of the appearance of an emperor or great personage, but of the dress of the common people we know nothing for certain.
In conclusion, I would remark that correctness in the matter of costume is far more necessary to an artist now than it was formerly. In this age of archæology and research we find, even on the stage, the most scrupulous fidelity observed, and it behooves us, as artists, not to lag behind.
You will find, both in the Academy library and at South Kensington, many excellent works on costume, and with such a mass of information within your reach it will be unpardonable if you fall into the anachronisms and absurdities of our ancestors.
LECTURE II.
BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE ART.
In the lectures I am about to deliver on Early Italian Art, I shall not enter into minute detail, nor shall I attempt a history of all the painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries who deserve mention. All I can hope to give you is a sort of bird’s-eye view of the various phases through which the Art of Painting passed from its lowest ebb to its highest development.
I feel as if you were a party of excursionists about to be personally conducted across a great art continent, and as if it behooved me, as your conductor, to perform my duty with judgment and discretion.
We shall have a vast desert to cross, where nothing is found to break the dull and ugly monotony of the scene. We cannot do better than take the express train for this part of our journey, and get over the ground as quickly as possible.
Substituting miles for years, we shall, when we have accomplished something like a thousand miles, begin to notice signs of a more fertile soil. These indications will be very faint at first, but after a time the objects of interest will become more frequent, and we shall leave our train and take to riding or driving so as to get a better view of what we are passing. After a drive of a hundred miles the country will become so interesting that we shall buckle on our knapsacks and perform the rest of the journey on foot.
To continue the parallel, I would remind you that you are only excursionists, and not leisurely travellers desirous of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the products of the country they are about to traverse.
To acquire a thorough knowledge of the decay and revival of art, it would be necessary to consult the numerous and learned treatises on the subject, and to study the political and social state of Italy during the Middle Ages.
Such a study, though doubtless very instructive, would be rather a dry subject for a lecture, even if I were equal to the task. I shall, therefore, attempt nothing of the kind, and having always had a tender feeling for those whose attendance here is compulsory, and admiration for those who come of their own free will, I shall endeavor to be as little tedious as possible, whilst imparting to you a sort of résumé of mediæval painting and the early Italian schools.
The designs and paintings which have been discovered in the catacombs are commonly held to be the earliest specimens we possess of Christian art; and if by Christian art we mean the representation of Biblical and New Testament subjects, they undoubtedly are the earliest. If, however, by Christian art we mean the peculiar style which grew up and was fostered by the early Church, we must look elsewhere, for these paintings are essentially pagan in style.
In common with the paintings of the Constantine baths, and with the numerous decorative designs discovered in the pagan catacombs of the period, they are clearly derived direct from classical sources.
They vary in merit according to the skill of the artist who executed them, and also according to the epoch of their production, those of the second century being infinitely superior to those of the third and fourth. In the earliest of these paintings, the Good Shepherd replaces Orpheus, Elias replaces Apollo, and so on, but the style is in no way distinguishable from contemporary Roman wall-paintings. The arabesque ornamentation of the panels is exactly similar, and although the subjects are such as Moses striking the rock, Jonah swallowed by the whale, Daniel in the lions’ den, and various Christian miracles, these interesting works cannot be considered in any other light than specimens of late Roman art adapted to the illustration of Scriptural subjects.
These catacomb paintings look to me more like copies of better things than original paintings. They appear to have been done by decorative artists, who would naturally be more at home with the ornamental borders and arabesques than with the figures. We may often notice this kind of inequality of work in modern houses.
The skilled workmen employed by the professional decorator will execute with consummate neatness all the ornamental parts, but if any figure is introduced into the panels it will be a coarse replica of some Pompeii muse, nymph, or cupid, possibly quite good enough for the purpose, but hardly indicative of the state of art of the period.
In the paintings of the third and fourth centuries there is a very noticeable decline in the drawing and execution, but there is still a reminiscence of a classical style. The draperies are still disposed with something