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CHAPTER XV
CONTINUATION OF PERIODS IN FURNITURE
From Greece, culture, borne 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
civilised 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 Cæsar 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. Cæsar, it is related, owned
a table costing a million sesterces ($40,000).
But gradually the pure line swerved, ever more and more influenced by
the Orient, for Rome, always successful in war, had established
colonies in the East. Soon Byzantine art reached Rome, bringing its
arabesques and geometrical designs, its warm, glowing colours, soft
cushions, gorgeous hangings, embroideries, and rich carpets. In fact
all the glowing luxury that the new Roman craved.
The effect of this mésalliance upon all Art, including interior
decoration, was to cause its immediate decline. Elaboration and
banal designs, too much splendour 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 neighbouring 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 Carlovingian 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
thousandfold, 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 marvellous
development known as the Gothic style,—of the Church, for the Church,
by the Church, perfected in countless Gothic cathedrals,—crystallised
glorias 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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