Continuation Of Periods In Furniture
FROM Greece, culture, born on the wings of the arts, moved on to
Rome, and at first, Roman architecture and decoration reproduced
only the classic Greek types; but, as Rome grew, her arts took on
another and very different outline, showing how the history of
decorative art is to a fascinating degree the history of customs and
manners.
Rome became prosperous, greedy, powerful and imperious, enslaving
the civilized world, and, not having the restraining laws of Greece,
waxed luxurious and licentious, and chafed, in consequence, at the
austere rigidity of the Greek style of furnishing.
We know that in the time of Augustus Caesar the Romans had wonderful
furniture of the most costly kind, made from cedar, pine, elm,
olive, ash, ilex, beach and maple, carved to represent the legs,
feet, hoofs and heads of animals, as in earlier days was the fashion
in Assyria, Egypt and Greece, while intricate carvings in relief,
showed Greek subjects taken from mythology and legend. Caesar, it is
related, owned a table costing a million sectaries ($40,000).
But gradually the pure line swerved, ever more and more influenced
by the Orient, for Rome, always successful in war, and had
established colonies in the East. Soon Byzantine art reached Rome,
bringing its arabesques and geometrical designs, it’s warm, glowing
colors, soft cushions, gorgeous hangings, embroideries, and rich
carpets. In fact all the glowing luxury that the new Roman craved.
The effect of this misalliance upon all Art, including interior
decoration, was to cause its immediate decline. Elaboration and
banal designs, too much splendor of gold and silver and ivory inlaid
with gold, resulted in a decadent art, which reflected a decadent
race and Rome, fell! Not all at once; it took five hundred years for
the neighboring races to crush her power, but continuous hectoring
did it, in 476 A. D. Then began the Dark Ages merging into the
Middle Ages (fifth to fifteenth centuries).
Dark they were, but what picturesque and productive darkness! Rome
fell, but the Car-loving Ian family arose, and with it the great
nations of Western Europe, to give us, especially in France, another
supreme flowering of interior decoration.
Britain was torn from the grasp of Rome by the Saxons, Danes and
Normans, and as a result the great Anglo-Saxon race was born to
create art periods. Mahomet appeared and scored as an epoch-maker,
recording a remarkable life and a spiritual cycle.
The Moors conquered Spain, but in so doing enriched her arts a
thousand fold, leaving the Alhambra as a beacon-light through the
ages. Finally the crusades united all warring races against the
infidels.
Blood was shed, but at the same time routes were opened up, by which
the arts, as well as the commerce, of the Orient, reached Europe.
And so the Byzantine continued to contend with Gothic art that art
which preceded from the Christian Church and stretched like a canopy
over Western Europe, all through the Middle Ages. It was in the
churches and monasteries that Christian art, driven from pillar to
post by wars, was obliged to take refuge, and there produced that
marvelous development known as the Gothic style, of the Church, for
the Church, by the Church, perfected in countless Gothic cathedrals,
crystallized glories lifting their manifold spires to heaven,
ethereal monuments of an intrepid Faith which gave material form to
its adoration, its fasting and prayer, in an unrivalled art.
There is one early Gothic chair, which has come down to us,
Charlemagne's, made of gilt-bronze and preserved in the Louvre, at
Paris. Any knowledge beyond this one piece, as to what Carlovingian
furniture was like (the eighth century) we get only from old
manuscripts which show it to have been the pseudo-classic, that is,
the classic modified by Byzantine influence, and very like the
Empire style of Napoleon I.
Here is the reason for the type. Constantinople was the capital of
the Eastern Empire, when in 726 A. D., Emperor Leo III prohibited
image worship, and the artists and artisans of his part of the
world, in order to earn a livelihood, scattered over Europe,
settling in the various capitals, where they were eagerly welcomed
and employed.
Even so late as the tenth to fourteenth centuries the knowledge we
have of Gothic furniture still comes from illustrated manuscripts
and missals preserved in museums or in the national libraries.
Rome fell as an empire in the fifth century. In the eighth century,
Venice asserted herself, later becoming the great, wealthy, Merchant
City of Eastern Europe, the golden gate between Byzantium and the
West (eleventh to fifteenth centuries). Her merchants visiting every
country naturally carried home all art expressions, but, so far as
we know, her own chief artistic output in very early days, was in
the nature of richly carved wooden furniture, no specimens of which
remain.
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