Ridgway, 'Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9504
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9504-ridgway-diffusion

@@@@95.4.4, Boardman, Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity

John Boardman, <i>The Diffusion of Classical Art in
Antiquity</i>. The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1993.
Bollingen Series XXXV:42. Princeton University Press, 1994. Pp.
352, ills. 422, 9 maps. $45. ISBN 0-691-03680-2.
     Reviewed by Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway -- Bryn Mawr College

     On March 28, 1993, John Boardman began his series of Mellon
lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., by
showing a slide of a satellite map of Europe and Asia <i>upside
down</i>. It seemed at first a clever oratorical trick, meant to
startle his audience while stressing the point that the speaker
intended to look at the Classical world and its influence in an
unconventional manner, not so much topsy-turvy as from a
different perspective. Yet, in this beautifully produced and
elegantly written book, here is the map again (pp. 310-11), and
not at the beginning of the discussion, but virtually at the end,
to emphasize the shifts in balance and viewpoint that reading the
text has required. As the caption explains, from this angle,
Italy and Greece look insignificant compared to the vast expanse
of India and Central Asia, and Persia seems the center of the
world. The Mediterranean becomes a "tortuous funnel" pouring the
waters of the Black Sea into the Atlantic, and Britain is seen to
be "thoroughly peripheral." "How satisfying for a Briton," adds
Sir John, "that this projection makes it so much bigger than it
should be in comparison with Mediterranean lands!" These
quotations should give a slight sense and flavor of what the
reader is to expect from the entire book: a thoroughly
intelligent, literate, enormously learned account of the
penetration of Greek artistic forms into non-Greek lands from the
personal, at times sardonic, perspective of a philhellene who
tries hard, but not always successfully, to be objective about
other cultures and their artistic achievements.

     The Preface sets the stage for what is to come. The book is
"about media rather than messages," an unpopular position at
present, when archaeologists and art historians are vying with
one another to explore hidden texts and meanings in all works of
art, whether artifacts or masterpieces. Yet the point is well
taken; we cannot be entirely sure of what such objects meant to
their viewers within their own culture, despite the abundant
literary information we have about ancient Greece. How can we
then expect to fathom what they may have conveyed to the
foreigners who imported and imitated them, and from whom we often
get no written account at all? We can note the appearance of the
Greek motifs, speculate on their means of transmission, and point
out the changes they underwent as they diffused abroad, hoping
that this very process of transformation will eventually tell us
something about intentions and perceptions. But the book ends
with "Conclusion," <i>not</i> Conclusions, as the author
underscores (p. 312), and he eventually acknowledges that answers
can only be general, and reflections personal, albeit borne of a
lifetime devoted to investigating all forms of Greek art, and not
simply, as modestly stated (p. 321), of the few years spent in
preparing this specific book.

     Most of it was already written when B. undertook to deliver
the Mellon Lectures, so this volume is not an expanded version of
an oral presentation but rather the result of B.'s continuing
interest in fields to which he had abundantly contributed in
previous publications: his work for the <i>CAH</i>, the <i>Oxford
History of Classical Art</i>, and the <i>LIMC</i>; his <i>Greek
Gems and Finger Rings</i>, the numerous (innumerable ?) articles
and books on vase painting and sculpture, and especially <i>The
Greeks Overseas</i>, which he had revised and expanded for the
1980 edition. Nobody was therefore better prepared than B. to
look at the wider picture. Even so, the reader cannot fail to be
impressed by the ample and very up-to-date bibliography, the span
of time covered, and the geographical range of the survey, which
is not limited to the area of Alexander's conquests--vast as they
were--but encompasses the spread of the Roman Empire. Chronology
is a bit of a problem, not only because the limits set by the
author are somewhat vague, but also, and primarily, because
information is relative and hard evidence difficult to find (cf.,
e.g., p. 116). Yet, I would have appreciated some approximate
indication of date in the captions to the many photographs, which
only identify piece, provenance, and present location. End notes
for each chapter provide bibliographical information, but they
too are quite concise, only occasionally used for asides and
personal comments. Since the book is intended for the general
reader as much as for the specialist (and I doubt that many could
control such different fields of specialization), more
encapsulated help would have been welcome.

     Because of its very nature, therefore, this is a difficult
book to review, and I shall have to fight off the temptation to
quote too extensively, letting the author, as it were, speak for
himself. Here, I cannot resist a citation from the brief
"Introduction" (p. 10): "this is decidedly not a book about
people waiting for something interesting and Greek to happen to
them." B. is careful in assessing the extent and value of Greek
influence from place to place, which he sees ranging from almost
total adoption of Hellenic forms and techniques (in Etruria and
Rome) to minimal (in the Keltic world); even areas traditionally
considered to have absorbed a good deal (e.g., Persia) are
judiciously scrutinized and re-evaluated. Very few, I believe,
will quarrel with B.'s assessment in broad terms.

     On the other hand, this is a book of surveys and
generalizations. As such, from time to time, it lays itself open
to criticism of over-simplification, and I could think of several
specific exceptions to B.'s occasional statements. Yet it would
be unfair to take the author to task, when his intent is
obviously to focus only on the highlights or the most convincing
examples. Undoubtedly, others would have written different
sections differently; the important point is that a single mind
has written them all, and we therefore get a consistent, if
somewhat subjective approach.

     The first chapter gives an encapsulated definition of Greek
art, from the Geometric to the "sub-Hellenistic" period, when
Greece and the eastern Mediterranean were under Roman domination.
The second deals with the Near East and the Persian Empire,
divided into two chronological sections--before about 550 B.C.,
and down to the time of Alexander the Great. It subsumes the
post-Hittite Anatolian kingdoms of Phrygia, Lydia, and Lykia, but
the Nereid Monument in Xanthos rates exactly two lines of text,
and quantities of extant sculpture seem summarily dismissed by
comparison with the attention given to Greco-Persian gems. The
third chapter covers the Semitic world and Spain, the former
encompassing the settlements in North Africa, Sicily, and
Sardinia. The Sidonian sarcophagi are said to be among the
earliest examples of the relief-decorated form in Greek style,
but word-of-mouth news of a recent find from the Troad may now
help fill the apparent gap. In the art from Spain, B. sees a good
deal that is native or Keltic and deplores the emotional tendency
in existing scholarship to ascribe too much to the Greeks. He is
equally critical of the pro- and anti-Semitic positions that have
either derived everything from black Africa or pictured the
Greeks as major antagonists of the Phoinikians: "The extreme
views on this matter are nonsense, supported by a degree of
selectivity and distortion in handling of evidence that would be
more appropriate to a pre-election politician" (p. 49).

     With the fourth chapter we enter the vast expanses of the
East after Alexander the Great, and new subdivisions are needed:
A, Persia and Parthia; B, Baktria; C, Gandhara and North India;
D, Central Asia and the Far East. It is here that I find B. most
difficult and most fascinating to follow. The transformation of
Greek motifs into new yet recognizable compositions, the infusion
of local meaning into foreign vessels, the Greek idiom of the
humanized standing Buddha, achieve their most revealing
expression. We learn as much by contrast as by similarity. I am
really not competent to comment, I can only marvel and admire,
since this is an art to which I tend to respond, especially to
the opulent volumes and decorative lines of Gandharan sculpture.
In Baktria, it is surprising to find that "Fine Art" is barely
touched by Greek forms, yet plain Hellenistic pottery keeps up
with Aegean developments (pp. 105-6), although those Baktrian
Greeks cannot chronologically be responsible for what happens in
Gandharan art during the second century after Christ. Rome in
this case receives proper acknowledgment for the phenomenon (p.
123).

     I find myself on more familiar grounds with chapter 5, on
Egypt and North Africa, and therefore more capable of
disagreement. The introductory pages are excellent (because I
know more?), but the suggestion that Hellenistic Aphrodites "may
well have prompted the Egyptian nude" (p. 172) seems to me both
inaccurate (since the cited example of fig. 5.25 is in fact
draped, albeit revealingly) and anachronistic, given the equally
tight dresses of Old and Middle Kingdom female statues. A section
on Coptic art has illuminating comments on why its products
appear somewhat comic to our eyes: "Wherever in antiquity
classical art had lost its roots in carefully planned and
proportioned monumentality, it readily turns into something
marionettish, seemingly superficial and decorative, although this
must often do less than justice to the intentions of its makers.
But there is a remarkable sameness in the peripheral classical
arts of late antiquity, be they in Gaul, Egypt, Persia or beyond"
(p. 178).

     Chapter 6 covers the countries of the Black Sea: Thrake,
Skythia, and Kolchis. Here readers' eyes are dazzled by nomadic
jewelry and metalwork, the latter including a good and rare
photograph of the recently-found Classicizing bronze torso from
late Hellenistic Vani (fig. 6.51). The gilt silver flask from
Borovo (fig. 6.4a,b), the gold rhyton from Panagurishte (fig.
6.5a), the gold plaques from Kul Oba and Deyev (fig. 6.41) serve
to reassure me that the motif of the frenzied maenad in swirling
drapery indeed goes back to the fifth century and is not a
creation of Hellenistic times, as some would advocate. B. has a
personal acquaintance with the land of Kolchis and its museums,
and offers a careful evaluation of Greek penetration and
settlement. I wish he had made mention and expressed his own
opinion of the great Battle Relief (Skythians? Amazons?) from the
Taman peninsula now in the Pushkin Museum (<i>RA</i> 1987,
10-18).

     Chapter 7 deals with Italy, or rather, with Etruria and
Rome; the Italic populations that were closer neighbors of the
Greeks in Sicily and South Italy are omitted. I shall return to
this topic, because of my own interests. But first I should
acknowledge the last chapter, 8, that, under Europe, covers the
art of the situlae, the Kelts and Britain: a succinct account
with intriguing visual juxtapositions and just a hint of approval
for the Hochdorf bronze "rat" translating and replacing one lost
Greek lion among the three on the edge of a cauldron (fig.
8.6a-c). This is for me unfamiliar territory where I do not
venture to tread.

     I feel differently about ancient Italy. B. tries his hardest
to be fair, but it is quite clear that he still looks at Etruscan
and Roman art with a Greek bias. He remarks for instance, that
Etruscan red figure, being painted over the black surface rather
than reserved, "is really just a forgery of Athenian, however
carefully done" (p. 265), and takes it for granted that it was
meant to deceive the inexperienced customer, for monetary gains.
Why not accept that it was just a different technique, probably
easier to apply than true red figure, although results were
comparable? To suggest that the Etruscans failed to appreciate
the social potential of art, especial painting, thus being fated
to remain always "a disappointment" to students of Greek art (p.
272), is to minimize the fact that our evidence from Etruria is
primarily funerary, as contrasted with the very public and
religious art of the Greeks--whose monumental paintings, however,
are only known through literary descriptions. The Murlo finds
(and just the revetment plaques, at that) are mentioned solely in
n. 55, and the Civita Alba architectural Keltomachy or the
Volterran urns with historical content are not cited. The
Francois Tomb is barely noted--for its Hellenistic shading (p.
269). In brief, the Etruscans still come out as a people who took
just about everything from the Greeks, be they the Ionians (which
would explain why some myths look unfamiliar to us, since the
East Greeks did not use painted pottery as a narrative medium: p.
254) or the Dorians (given the spelling of Etruscan divine names,
which suggests the appealing vignette of "a Doric Greek sitting
down with a literate Etruscan mirror-maker, probably in Vulci, to
improve his product by adding plentiful names to the myth scenes,
<i>a la grecque</i>" : p. 253). Yet when a relief mirror (fig.
7.27) uses the Peleus/Thetis motif but labels the figures
Herakles and Mlacuch, B. comments (p. 254) that "a Greek hero"
has been coopted for a local story, despite his own
acknowledgment that Hercle had a long-standing cult in Rome,
which, at least to judge from the Cacus episode, might have had
its own share of indigenous myths as well.

     Needless to say, Rome does not fare much better, and this
time the quotation on p. 291 is from Kenneth Clark, but B. seems
to accept the reality of "that long slumber of the creative
imagination which lasted from the end of the second century B.C.
to the third century AD." What would happen to this conception if
it could be proven (not just submitted, as I have) that the
Barberini Faun and the "Pergamene" Gauls are instead creations of
the Roman Imperial period? To be sure, the answer might be that
such proof will never become available, because the idea is
simply a figment of my imagination. But as our concept of
originals and copies evolves, there might come a time when
excellent quality and aesthetic beauty will no longer be
automatically equated with a Greek and lifeless imitation with a
Roman date.

     By the same token, why should Greece itself remain
unproductive after the Roman conquest? Political vicissitudes did
not totally curtail its creativity during the period of
Macedonian supremacy, and we no longer take it for granted, with
Winckelmann, that political freedom and civic stability were
prerequisites for aesthetic greatness. Contrast, as B. does, the
fact that "the Greek east remained more 'classical' in the early
centuries AD than did hellenized Rome." I am not sure why this
"was due to the continuing tradition of Greek craftsmen ignoring
developments to the west." Could Greeks in Greece not have done
the same?

     I hope this Italic outburst will be taken in the same vein
as the Briton's comment about the shape of Britain in the
satellite map. When a text is thought-provoking it will in fact
provoke, and B. is too serious a scholar not to be taken
seriously, even when he writes a book of sweeping surveys. Eyes
will be sharpened and classical sensitivity increased by this
magisterial account of the diffusion of an artistic tradition
that so many of us share.