182 ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Paet II. 



Italy are often remarkable for grandeur and richness of design, 

 as well as for great variety in the figures, which are drawn by a 

 masterly hand ; but they convey an impression of being the 

 offspring of a taste delighting in the luxury of ornament 

 rather than of one imbued with a pure feeling for art. There 

 is a voluptuousness in them, with an approach almost to 

 meretricious ornament ; and the designs are less pure, as the 

 forms and proportions of the vases themselves (grand as they 

 frequently are) are less perfect than the best of Greco-Etrus- 

 can time. This may be partly explained by the former being 

 of a later period, when taste had begun to be corrupted, 

 and when the Greeks had fallen into the error (common to 

 all declining taste) of introducing elongated forms. Thus, 

 though the beautiful coins of the time of Hicetas and the 

 second Hieron, about 280 B.C., have obtained so much admira- 

 tion, we may trace in them the evidence of mannerism in the 

 treatment of the human figure, the horses, and various acces- 

 sories, showing a departure from the purity of the best Greek 

 works ; and it is interesting to compare the laboured finish of 

 the hair and folds of drapery with their broader treatment in 

 the coins of 450 and 420 B.C., or with the semi-Archaic style 

 retained in those of Demarete, the wife of Gelon, B.C. 478. 



I will not pretend to say whether the Greeks of Sicily and 

 Magna Grsecia adopted some degree of mannerism before it 

 appeared in Greece, through a Sicilian or Italian influence ; 

 but there appears to be some reason for this conclusion ; and 

 the most beautiful coins of Sicily are less pure in design than 

 those of Elis, Clazomene, the Locri-Opuntii, Chalcidice, and 

 some others of the same date in Greece, about 450-380 B.C. ; 

 nor do the coins of Metapontum, Thurii, Heraclea, beautiful 

 as they are, display the same grandeur and breadth of draw- 

 ing as those of Greece just mentioned. 



The fact of the Greek vases of Southern Italy being re- 

 markable for mannerism and elongated forms is certainly in 



