Thanks to the Roman conquests, the Hellenistic-Roman art acquired such an influence on the ancient Gallic and Old Germanic art, which we will now consider that, by mixing it with them, Roman provincial art arose . The architecture of this trend (see Vol. 1, Vol. 4, II, 1) continued, however, to still rely entirely on the basis of Roman world art, and painting was only a distorted offspring of Hellenistic-Roman painting. The field of Roman provincial art, which had a Roman character on the Rhine in general, and in Gaul itself great independence, was sculpture and small art.
Greco-Roman artworks fell into the area of distribution of the latent art by the masses; In addition, Roman artists and artisans settled there. Soon they began to appear in Gaul more often than in Germany, local natives, ready to learn the art of the conquerors. Works of Roman small art penetrated by trade relations even beyond the borders of the empire, as a result of which individual specimens of Roman bronzes were found far to the north and south. But the actual Gallic-Roman and German-Roman provincial art was kept within the empire, that is, in Germany, besides the Rhine, on this side of the “limes” arranged by the Roman conquerors of the shaft, which had 550 kilometers in length and separated Retsiyu and Upper Germany from the free Northern Germany.
As already noted above (see Vol. 1, Vol. 4, II, 3), in the Roman provincial art of the localities that are now part of Germany and France, the ministry of Mifra enjoyed particular affection. The idealistic aspiration of this art, of course, was generally far less significant than the desire for simultaneous art on the banks of the Tiber. Examples of how the spoiled Hellenistic-Roman form language was used to express the mythological representations of the Gauls or Germans are not rare, but instructive rather for the history of culture than for the history of art. For example, we find the general Roman character with Gallic details in the inhospitable large lillbone Apollo of the Louvre Museum and in numerous bronze statues of the gods, which can be studied in the museums of Bordeaux and Boulogne. Such works as, for example, archaically stiffened from white clay, but, in spite of this, the painted Gallo-Roman Venus, located in the museum of S. Germain-en-Leu, or the figure of the Gallo-Roman god, have an even more foreign character, sitting, like a Buddha, with legs tucked under him. Reinakh, assuming that both of these types are brought to Gaul straight from Hellenistic Egypt, considers the second of the aforementioned figures, also belonging to the S.-Germain Museum, Egyptized by Mercury (see Fig. 541, h).
Gallo-Roman and German-Roman provincial art is more fresh in our realistic works. Gallo-Roman figures of animals, such as the bronzes of the museums of Lyon and S. Germain-en-Leu, are distinguished by a certain kind of originality. But realistic relief images on the tombstones, with all the skillfulness of their execution, still show only the great difference between the works of the province and the capital's artistic works. In Germany, as a strong work of its kind, you can point to the reliefs of the Sekundin monument in Igele, near Trier, to the reliefs of the Neumagen monuments in the Trier Museum (farewell, returning from a hunt, teaching scene, bringing tribute), for all its coarseness, they are characterized by liveliness, and on the reliefs of the tombstone of the shipwright Bluss in the Mainz Museum, depicting the dead person with his family on the front side and his vessel on the back. At the end of the pores of the Roman provincial sculpturing, such rude figures as the Compiène Museum's Mercy, resembling the ancient Ionian sitting statues of Didimeon, near Miletus (see Fig. 271), or as a Gallic warrior of the Calvian Museum in Avignon, depicted in clothing of the 4th c. n e.
However, the Roman provincial art, pushing aside the first century of our time, the Laten art that prevailed before in the north could never destroy it completely. In the works of small art with particular clarity can be seen how the Roman and Late directions penetrate one into the other, fit in with each other. So, for example, the Roman provincial arc-shaped fibula, in which the bow for the most part made up one piece with the needle holder, apparently originated from the arc-shaped fibula of latency, and the so-called West European barbarian enamel, in which places for the vitreous alloy were hollowed in bronze (etched enamel) , but were not encircled at the edges with wire (cloisonne enamel), can be traced to the very Hallstatt culture.
The farther to the north, the more transparent becomes the cover of the Hellenistic-Roman culture, which covered the Latinsky region. Particularly curious is the influence of Roman art-industrial products, which penetrated beyond the northern borders of the empire, on the artistic production of free German countries that the Romans never occupied. Marking the master Publius Tsipa Polyb is found, for example, on bronze vessels, both found in Pompeii and opened in Jutland, on Falster, in Hungary and England.
While the Roman Empire flourished, the marked influence, as Sophus Muller proved, was so strong that we have the right to speak about the German-Roman ornamentation of the time in question, which continued to exist for a long time at the time of the resettlement of peoples, but gradually developed the purely German elements contained in it. together with the roman. The Jutland earthen vessels of the first times of the empire, kept in the Copenhagen Museum, are distinguished by their purity of forms and not so much luxurious as good and clear ornamentation. Wide strips filled with parallel lines and transverse strokes, then go along the vessel in a horizontal or vertical direction, then form something peculiar on it, like a meander, rarely circles. Sometimes there are again all the ancient elements of the ornament. But it is remarkable that, with very few exceptions and except for individual cases of direct imitation of simple motifs, the Roman vegetative ornament by the northern warriors is not at all assimilated. Just as the floral ornament everywhere followed only the geometric and animal, so here the tribes, not yet mature for this, do not assimilate the floral ornament, although in their samples they had no shortage, and this is only because it was still for them incomprehensible. The animal ornament in the Germanic-Roman art of the north, on the one hand, approaches the Hellenistic-Roman forms, as can be seen, for example, on the frieze with four-legged animals, decorating one silver cup of the Copenhagen Museum, and on the frieze of barbaric character representing sea horses and goats, in the Kiel Museum (see Fig. 541, i), and on the other, it gives off the rudiments of animal ornamentation, which are everywhere, where possible, in the corners of the fields, on the tips, on the extremities. Thus, we unexpectedly find the animals 'heads on the buttons of swords' bands, handles, knobs, and, as Sophus Muller pointed out, these heads are not copied from nature, but are generated by fantasy, which in any form resembles the animal's head and then emphasizes it similarity through the designation in the proper place, first eye, and then the entire muzzle. Such heads have the type of bird head, then the head of a quadruped. For example, you can indicate the tip of the sword and the rim of the sword sheath in the Copenhagen Museum (k, t). It is difficult to allow this animal ornamentation, as Sophus Muller thought, to have anything in common with the tips of knives of northern bronze art, having the form of animals, or similar forms of Hallstatt art, but was a completely new motive that grew in the north in the later centuries of the era empire. In any case, when considering this issue, one cannot but take into account the propensities for such forms in the Laten era; in any case, these new or revived forms led to the suppression of the German-Roman character of jewelry, which followed in the era of the migration of peoples and was completely accomplished by the beginning of the time of the Merovingians.
The extent to which the echoes of classical art forms were held in barbaric art for a long time can be judged, for example, from the silver pot in Copenhagen, richly decorated with embossed images found in the Copenhagen Museum, found in 1891, during excavations remained unsolved. Despite the fact that he was found in the north, judging by some of his ornaments, for example, by the figure of a god sitting with his legs tucked under himself, we can recognize him as a Gallic product of the end of the era of migration of nations; Other features of this boiler give reason to look for its homeland on the shores of the Black Sea. Be that as it may, the image of a man fighting a lion (l) is an almost exact, though barbaric, copy of a classical relief depicting Hercules' fight against a lion (m) - the work received from the Saburov collection in the Berlin Museum.
Monuments like the aforementioned Gundestrup Cauldron have some similarities with the products of goldsmiths of the time of the resettlement of peoples, found mainly in Hungary and in even more remote eastern areas. Of these products, first of all, it is necessary to mention the wonderful golden plates, partly those which probably adorned horse harness. They are now stored in the St. Petersburg Hermitage, belonging to the main treasures of its Siberian department. The places in which they were found in Siberia are not precisely known. You can get acquainted with them by a large essay on South Russian art, published by the city of Kondakov, gr. Tolstoy and Reinach. Sometimes they have a quadrangular frame, sometimes their edges form the contour of the image itself, but they all represent, in rough through work, characteristically distorted, partly fantastic animals in a fight between themselves or with people who join them in battle, sitting on a horse or climbing on the trees. In general, these images, not excluding landscape accessories, reflect the influence of later Greek art, originally and deliberately distorted in the spirit of the barbarians. But gold works, such as, for example, a bird of prey, in the claws of which a sheep is writhing, come close to the jewels of the same time found in Europe by lining them with colored glass enamel. The wealth of the European royal treasures of the time of the migration of peoples was reflected in some of these “treasures”, giving us an idea of the brilliance of the Nibelun treasure. After Paul Clement joined in his detailed work with the results of Joseph Gampel’s research on the gold items found in Nagi Szent-Miklos, the Scythian-Greek cities on the northern coast of the Black Sea, which, in our opinion, also indicate the oldest fettersfeld gold finds. But the bearers of this art recognize the Germanic Goths, and in the mixed style of his works try to distinguish the elements of the Hellenistic-Roman, Eastern (Sassanian) and local ones. The diadem, luxuriously decorated with noble stones, found on the Don and stored in the Scythian collection of the Hermitage, is decorated in front with a female bust cut from chalcedony, and on the upper edge with plastic figures of elks and Caucasian stone sheep. On the relief of a silver bowl belonging to gr. Stroganov from St. Petersburg, depicts a feast couple of Gothic newlyweds. In the treasure Petrosa (Petreosa, Petroassa), the remnants of which constitute one of the decorations of the Bucharest Museum, an octagonal bowl with ears in the form of panthers and a rich decoration of flat polished semi-noble stones, located in the words of Julius Lessing, were found in the late Roman origin, as a simple pattern in a network of cells with metal vertical edges. " In the hoard of Nagi Szentsen-Miklos, in the Vienna Court Museum, there is a magnificent vessel with a barbarically executed image of a horseman in mail, which some recognize as Sassanian, and others, or rather, Gothic. The bowl from the same treasure, having a clumsy handle in the shape of an animal's head, resembling the artistic techniques of primitive peoples, is decorated with a classically elegant palmette border. On the other objects of the Nagi-Scientist-Miklos treasure, the remains of cells are visible, in which polished grenades were inserted or colored glassy mass was found. Numerous gold items, discovered on the Lake Platten and in other places of Hungary and now constitute the pride of the Budapest National Museum, are also mostly decorated with cellular glaze (verroterie cloisonne e), which differs sharply from real enamel. On all these works that carry us from the III. n e. in the 5th century, in many respects and especially in view of these decorations made of colored stones or glass, one should look like the predecessors of several later Westgoth, Lombard, Burgundian, Frankish and Alemannic products, of which here are subject to our consideration as products of undoubtedly pre-Christian origin , only found in the graves of West Germany, Belgium and France, for it is customary to refer only these jewelry items to the time of the Merovingians, although they belong to a somewhat more ancient era.
In the study of the art of the Merovingians, to which, in the broad sense of the word, Anglo-Saxon, Irish and Scandinavian contemporary art joined him, such scholars as F. de Lasteira, S. Reinach, L. Lindenshmit, I. Noak, K. Lamprecht and P Clement But we will discuss below some of the main phenomena in this artistic field, such as, for example, all Lombard art, as they bear the undoubted imprint of Christianity. Here we must confine ourselves to pointing out some pagan basic features of the ornamentation of this stage of development.
The tomb of King Childeric I, who died in 481, opened in Dornic, the ancient residence of the Merovingians, has a pagan character. What was found in it, partly dissipated, partly stored in the Louvre Museum. Close to these things are the works found in Pouin, near Arcy-sur-Aubé, in the tomb, as it is supposed, of the Visigothic King Theodoric I, who fell in 451. But the Theodolinda crown in the sacristy of the Cathedral of Monz and related to each other in style are crowns from the Hvarrtara The treasures located in the Cluny Museum in Paris and in the Armory Museum (Armeria) in Madrid obviously belong to the Christian time. They belonged, as the inscriptions on them prove, to the Gothic kings of Svintile (died in 631) and Recesssession (died in 672) and therefore have the advantage over other monuments of this kind that the time of their manufacture and place are known with precision . In the museum of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and in other French, as well as in German collections, there are many similar items originating from other places. A distinctive feature of their ornamentation is the occurring golden cells filled with colored, mostly red, semi-precious stones or glassy pastes. The decoration in the form of an eagle, in a museum in Cluny, can serve as a vivid example of this method of decoration in western Europe, and for us there can be no doubt that Eastern Europe was the birthplace of this method, if not even more distant eastern countries. Some evidence indicates that he is of Sassanian origin. Numerous fasteners of clothes of the considered time, the circular back side of which is covered with the same decorations, perhaps even brought from Eastern countries. At least, the brooches of the typical fish or bird shape, with the same inserts of stones or pasta, borrowed from there the technique of this kind of jewelry, spread by the Goths throughout Europe.
The Meroving fibula itself, which has a wide upper part, at the head end, or quadrangular, or rounded and dotted with buttons or arcuate notches along the edges, represents a spacious field for ornamentation. Although some of these fasteners, such as the famous Fibula from Nordendorf, in the Augsburg Museum, resemble the brooch from Keststeli, the Budapest National Museum is probably more ancient, but there is no doubt that most of these Merovingian fibulas and numerous others objects of decoration, in the ornamentation of which the insertion of stones and glassy paste is less common, is usually richly decorated with patterns of a different kind, typical of Western and Northern Europe. Among them is the Germanic highly entangled braid. Без сомнения, простую, еще древнехалдейскую и позднеримскую ленточную плетенку, которую мы видим на вышеупомянутой фибуле из Кесцтели, можно считать первой ступенью перехода к густой, неправильной плетенке на меровингских уборах, в каждом отдельном случае различной и нередко заключающей в себе головы животных; но эта своеобразная орнаментация, в которой не сохранилось ни одного из элементов классической растительной орнаментики и из мотивов животного мира, свойственных восточной орнаментике времени переселения народов, выработалась, как и показывает область ее распространения, во всяком случае на германском севере; что эта выработка совершилась еще во времена язычества, доказывается тем, что означенная орнаментация встречается на предметах, найденных в языческих могилах Визенталя (в Филиппсбургском округе) в Бадене.
Эта германская животная и ленточная орнаментика времен переселения народов и эпохи Меровингов, с северными предшественниками которой мы уже ознакомились, требует от нас особого рассмотрения.
В меровингскую эпоху (500-750 гг.) германское и французское искусство особенно часто пускало в ход в орнаментике, помимо возрождавшихся латенских мотивов, ленточную плетенку, тогда как скандинавское, ирландское и в особенности англосаксонское искусство, напротив того, отдавали предпочтение животным элементам. Многорядное плетение из лент, из которого нередко выступают головы или ноги животных, насколько можно судить по найденным отдельным предметам, из которых, например, заслуживают внимания кроме вышеупомянутой венгерской фибулы из Кесцтели находящаяся в Майнцском музее оправа седла из Ингельхейма и металлическая пряжка из Урсини, в Бернском музее, произошло из простой, исстари известной ленточной плетенки, но получило дальнейшее развитие под влиянием разнообразных шнуровок одежды рассматриваемого времени. Родственные этому орнаменту резные украшения деревянных пластинок из алеманнских гробниц Лупфена, в швабском Шварцвальде, находящихся в Штутгартском музее древностей, указывают на участие в развитии мотива плетенки резьбы по дереву, несомненно игравшей известную роль и в архитектуре времен Меровингов, деревянные произведения которой погибли бесследно. Орнаментика резьбы по дереву была перенесена на изделия из металлов.
In Germany, Switzerland and France, samples of this ornamentation were found mainly in the graves; in the Scandinavian north, with the exception of the later graves on the island of Bornholm, they were preserved mainly in peat bogs as part of the once buried or sunken treasure.
Fig. 546. Wiesenthal metal plates of the time of the Merovingians. By lindenshmit
First of all, let us consider the antiquities of this kind, found in Alemannic, Frankish and Burgundian graves. Decorations (fig. 546), obtained from pagan graves in Wiesenthal and stored in the Karlsruhe Museum, represent the already fully developed Germanic style of ribbon weaving with animals entangled in it. The heads of animals turning into ribbon loops have mostly indefinite forms, although it can be seen that they are four-legged or bird heads; only in the later Christian era of this epoch reappear as classical reminiscences, lions, vultures and winged horses, remaining alien to Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon art. Snakes are rare. In any case, if the ribbon loop with the conditional head of an animal was looked at as a snake, then this was a misunderstanding. Full figures of animals on the grave finds of this group come across less often than separate parts of animals. But such parts are one or the forming figures with the help of a ribbon plexus are less common here than in the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian ornamentation of the same epoch. Human heads or bodies in the pagan German-French art of the Merovingian era are marked by rudeness and incompetence of drawing. There is no trace of classical traditions in the head on the ring with Childerik's seal. The rider on a bronze ring from Oberolm, in the Mainz Museum, somewhat resembles the forms of the most ancient Hellenic Dipilonian style (see fig. 259). In Germany, the Mainzian, Wiesbaden, Sigmaring, Stuttgart and Munich museums are especially rich in items from the Merovingian era.
The Anglo-Saxon ornamentation of this kind, in the evaluation of which we agree with Ackerman and Sophus Muller, in spite of its internal kinship with the West German, represents a kind of opposition to it. Anglo-Saxon animal motifs are also reduced to a few types; the main ones are the bird's head with a highly curved beak and the head of a four-legged one with eyes and nostrils as it appears when viewed from above; then among the figures of whole animals, an important role is played by birds with curved claws, small wings and a short tail, and four-pawed with anterior paw turned forward and from the rear, either under the belly or on the back. These images were cut on the bronze plates deep inside, and the internal lines were drawn so ineptly that the individual parts of the figure appear as if attached to each other without any connection. The consequence of this was that the Anglo-Saxon ornamentation of the time in question dismembered the figures of animals into separate pieces even more often than the German-French, and arbitrarily depicted these pieces either separately or connecting them together. The figures of animals stretched into a string are sometimes found in works of goldsmiths, and from this, the figures characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon art of the four-legged tetrapods of an unknown breed that are characteristic for Anglo-Saxon art occur. Sophus Muller, defining the features of this art, said: "The dismemberment and discarding of members, compilation and alteration - these are the factors that Anglo-Saxon ornaments used to diversify their few motives to infinity; however, nothing was actually created."
Irish art has a completely different look. Manuscripts that were produced and decorated with miniatures in Irish monasteries play an important role in the history of Christian painting of the early Middle Ages. We will talk about them below, but we consider it necessary now to note that the basic principles of Irish ornamentation emerged back in pre-Christian time. That the Germanic ornamentation of the continent had an influence on her, this we, along with Lindenshmit and Clement, consider not so improbable, as some other researchers believe. L. Filser persistently argued its German origin. However, it should be considered in some respects as a special branch of North-Western European art that is simultaneous with it, which has brought its own national Irish fruits.
Irish ornamentation is characterized by a ribbon weave, the use of which in it either increases or weakens, and the mass of organic life is often introduced into this motif; independent forms of stylized plants or figures of people turning into ribbons enter into it. But mainly Irish ornamentation uses animal figures, from which even in good old time (600–800) it took only four-legged vague breed, sometimes pulling out their bodies as lizards, and some long-legged bird with a curved beak. A distinctive feature of the animals of Irish ornamentation is a ribbon that comes out in the form of a bundle from their nape. This ornamentation does not at all resort to the division of the animal's body into parts and to uniting them again into one whole. But then, animals are originally and fantastically inserted one into the other, holding one another in the mouth or in the beak by tape-like processes and filling the quadrangular spaces, as we see, for example, in Saint-Gallen miniature (see fig. 541, n) , connected in a beautiful geometrized patterns, played on a diagonal basis and not strictly symmetrical. These forms of Irish ornamentation partly resemble the works of the New Tamlenburg primitive tribes (see Fig. 53).
In the Scandinavian north, the ornamentation of which during the period under consideration was particularly thoroughly investigated by Sophus Muller, its development took place from 500 to 800 years. n e. in parallel with the development of German and Anglo-Saxon ornamentation. “Animals play the role of the ornament, and their figures are treated like it. They are stretched and bent, lengthened and shortened, distorted in accordance with the requirements of the space that they have to fill with themselves.” The head of an animal with an elongated occipital line, the long head of an animal, as it appears, if you look at it from above, with bulging eyes and protruding nostrils, a round bird's head with a curved beak, and here play the main role. Sometimes the two heads of animals are connected to one another in such a way that something similar to a human head is obtained. Belt weaving, to which similar parts of animals are tangled, is in the north for the most part in the form of an animal body stretched into a ribbon. The large bronze fibula (see fig. 541, o) of the Copenhagen Museum is an excellent example of northern animal ornamentation.
In the period between 800 and 1000, in the so-called Viking Age, the Scandinavian ornamental style underwent a significant change under the influence of a strong current that penetrated into Scandinavia through Ireland, which might be considered to be the reverse. The immediate consequence was the appearance of a mixed style; but soon, from about 900, the Northern Irish style rejected all the characteristics of the most ancient North German ornamentation, and Scandinavian ornamentation again reflected all the features of the Irish, mostly the later style. The head and back of ornamental animals sometimes even stand out flat topography above the plate on which they are placed. Animals are often depicted stretched and running. The Irish leafy ornament of this era is mixed here in a kind of alteration; human figures play a more prominent role here than the one they played in German-Scandinavian ornamentation before 800. Comparison of Irish ornaments (n) taken from one Cambridge manuscript with Scandinavian ornamental animals of the same epoch on a yoke from Mammen, located in The Copenhagen Museum (p) proves this connection as convincingly as possible. Along with this collar and the collar from Zolled, a silver goblet from Jelling, in the Copenhagen Museum, can serve as a typical example of the works of applied art of the Viking era.
In the northern art of the time in question, memorable stones play an important role . "Bauta stones", which, like the menhirs of more ancient times, do not have any inscriptions, ornaments and images, are found on the island of Bornholm and in Sweden. In the case when they are equipped with inscriptions, they are called runic. Runes - the letters of the north; The 16 characters of the oldest runic alphabet are not entirely out of touch with classical alphabets, the signs of which have acquired the right of citizenship in the north, both in writing and in the spoken language. But rune stones only have the value of artistic monuments, when decorated with ornaments or any images. The most important of these artistic runic stones are found near the great burial mounds of Jutland, at the mounds in Jelling, under which ancient King Gorm and his wife Tire were buried. The largest of these two stones, as the inscription on it indicates, was erected by King Harald, the conqueror of Norway and the preacher of Christianity in Scandinavia, in memory of his parents, Gorm and Tira. On the back side of this stone we see a semi-Anglo-Saxon, semi-Irish stylized image of an animal, entangled in the familiar ribbon loops. But on the front side is already Christ, as in many of the Irish miniatures in the pose of the Crucified, but without the cross, and His body is supported in this position by leafy garlands and weaving of ribbons curling around the legs and arms (s). Here we have the end of northern pre-Christian art. A new era begins, bringing new feelings and beliefs, and with it begins the Christian art, which appeared in the south nine centuries earlier than in the north.
By the time of the art of the Vikings are also monuments of the pagan era in Hungary, on which we can not stop; the same time as they, belong to the works of ancient Slavic art, the monuments of which, a kind of stone idols, are preserved in different places of Eastern and Central Europe. In the vast steppes of Russia, in the space between the Dnieper and the Yenisei, there were a large number of stone-carved male and female figures, initially standing on the burial mounds, and now mostly removed from them and placed in other places or completely destroyed. Male figures of this kind, carved out of granite, come across in Galicia and Siberia. Particularly characteristic are the so-called stone women of the southern Russian steppes, lying between the Dnieper and the Sea of Azov. They are cut from soft white limestone, have a sitting, standing position and reach a height of 2-4 meters. Sometimes they are extremely ugly and resemble the stone female figures of the Bronze Age in France, in Collorg (see fig. 16); but even the best of them do not go, with respect to forms, from the confines of frontal and primitive art. Their faces are flat, with thick cheeks and short noses; there is a cap on the head, sagging breasts; they hold a vessel with their hands in front of their belly, a motif that is very common in prehistoric art and other places (see fig. 28, d). However, some of these idols belong to the Middle Ages. Albin Kohn reminded that as early as 1253, the French ambassador Rubrikvis wrote about the custom of the “Comans” to pour a huge mound over the grave of the deceased and put on it a stone statue of a man holding a vessel in his hands.
The three-tiered stone pillar from Gusyatin, in Galicia, located in the Krakow Museum, is more complicated than these monuments. The top of it is formed by four male figures turned by faces on all four sides; one common cap covering these heads gives them the appearance of a single figure.
Statues, similar to those about which we have just spoken, are also preserved in Germany, where they are considered Slavic or Venetian of the last times of paganism. Of the three stone figures cut down by flat relief, found in the river bed of Main, and located in the prehistoric collection in Munich, the two larger ones depict, obviously, men in long clothes, without a headdress. One of them has a mustache and beard. The modeling of the head and face of these sculptures is almost as primitive as that of the aforementioned Kollorga sculptures. The hands, with no signs of a brush and with roughly marked fingers, are folded on the stomach and so flat that they hardly stand out. Equally ugly are the four male figures of red and gray granite, found in Rosenberg and stored in the Danzig Museum; however, their heads are planted on their bodies somewhat better than those of the Munich idols; in their hands they all hold goblets in the shape of a horn, and some, in addition, swords or rods.
In relation to the dismemberment of the body and head, a prominent male figure in the church of Altenkirchen, on the island of Rügen, represents a particularly significant step forward. It is quite clearly distinguishable headdress, beard and clothing. And this figure holds a cup in the form of a horn. The opinion that this relief depicts the Venus god Svantevit, of course, is not based on anything. The so-called monk in the church of Bergen, on Tyugen, with exactly the same shape and body and head position, does not hold a horn, but a cross; however, M. Weigel, who investigated all the Slavic statues of the time we are considering, considers this cross a later fixture. Be that as it may, the Bergen "monk" again brings us to the border between the pagan and Christian eras. For the further development of art in the north of Europe, it was of great importance that when Christian medieval art conquered these areas, it already had time to get a certain look in other countries.
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