and elastic bed of cement, made of pitch and pounded brick. The design was then beaten into relief from the back with hammers and punches, the pitch bed yielding to the protuberances which were thus formed, and serving to prevent the punch from breaking the metal into holes. The pitch was then melted away from the front of the embossed relief, and applied in a similar way to the back, so that the modelling could be completed on the face of the relief, the final touches being given by the graver. This process was chiefly applied by medieval artists to the precious metals, but by the Assyrians, Greeks and other early nations it was largely used for bronze. The great gates of Shalmaneser II., 858–823 B.C., from Balawat, now in the British Museum, are a remarkable example of this sort of work on a large scale, though the treatment of the reliefs is minute and delicate.
Fig. 2.—One of the Siris Bronzes.
The “Siris bronzes,” in the same museum, are a most astonishing example of the skill attained by Greek artists in this repoussé work (see Brönsted’s Bronzes of Siris, 1836). They are a pair of shoulder-pieces from a suit of bronze armour, and each has in very high relief a combat between a Greek warrior and an Amazon. No work of art in metal has probably ever surpassed these little figures for beauty, vigour and expression, while the skill with which the artist has beaten these high reliefs out of a flat plate of metal appears almost miraculous. The heads of the figures are nearly detached from the ground, their substance is little thicker than paper, and yet in no place has the metal been broken through by the punch. They are probably of the school of Praxiteles, and date from the 4th century B.C. (see fig. 2).
Copper and tin have been but little used separately. Copper in its pure state may be worked by the same methods as bronze, but it is inferior to it in hardness, strength and beauty of surface. Tin is too weak and brittle a metal to be employed alone for any but small objects. Some considerable number of tin drinking-cups and bowls of the Celtic period have been found in Cornwall in the neighbourhood of the celebrated tin and copper mines, which have been worked from a very early period. The use of lead has been more extended. In sheets it forms the best of all coverings for roofs and even spires. In the Roman and medieval periods it was largely used for coffins, which were often richly ornamented with cast work in relief. Though fusible at a very low temperature, and very soft, it has great power of resisting decay from damp or exposure. Its most important use in an artistic form has been in the shape of baptismal fonts, chiefly between the 11th and the 14th centuries. The superior beauty of colour and durability of old specimens of lead is owing to the natural presence of a small proportion of silver. Modern smelters carefully extract this silver from the lead ore, thereby greatly impairing the durability and beauty of the metal.
As in almost all the arts, the ancient Egyptians excelled in their metal-work, especially in the use of bronze and the precious metals. These were worked by casting and hammering, and ornamented by inlay, gilding and enamels with the greatest possible skill. From Egypt perhaps was derived the early skill of the Hebrews. Further instruction in the art of metal-working came probably to the Jews from the neighbouring country of Tyre. The description of the great gold lions of Solomon’s throne, and the laver of cast bronze supported on figures of oxen, shows that the artificers of that time had overcome the difficulties of metal-working and founding on a large scale. The Assyrians were perhaps the most remarkable of all ancient nations for the colossal size and splendour of their works in metal; whole circuit walls of great cities, such as Ecbatana, are said to have been covered with metal plates, gilt or silvered. Herodotus, Athenaeus and other Greek and Roman writers have recorded the enormous number of colossal statues and other works of art for which Babylon and Nineveh were so famed. The numerous objects of bronze and other metals brought to light by the excavations in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, though mostly on a small scale, bear witness to the great skill and artistic power of the people who produced them; while the discovery of some bronze statuettes, shown by inscriptions on them to be not later than 2200 B.C., proves how early was the development of this branch of art among the people of Assyria.
The Metal-Work of Greece.—The early history of metal-working in Greece is extremely obscure, and archaeologists are divided in opinion even on so important a question as the relative use of bronze and iron in the Homeric age. The evidence of Mycenaean remains, as compared with the literary evidence of Homer, is both inadequate and inconclusive (see Aegean Civilization; Greek Art; Arms and Armour, Ancient; Plate; &c.). The poems of Homer are full of descriptions of elaborate works in bronze, gold and silver, which, even when full allowance is made for poetic fancy, show clearly enough very advanced skill in the working and ornamenting of these metals. Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles, made of bronze, enriched with 'bands of figure reliefs in gold, silver and tin, could hardly have been written by a man who had not some personal acquaintance with works in metal of a very elaborate kind. Again, the accuracy of his descriptions of brazen houses—such as that of Alcinous, Od. vii. 81—is borne witness to by Pausanias’s mention of the bronze temple of Athena Χαλκίοικος in Sparta, and the bronze chamber dedicated to Myron in 648 B.C., as well as by the discovery of the stains and bronze nails, which show that the whole interior of the so-called treasury of Atreus at Mycenae was once covered with a lining of bronze plates. Of the two chief methods of working bronze, gold and silver, it is probable that the hammer process was first practised, at least for statues, among the Greeks, who themselves attributed the invention of the art of hollow casting to Theodorus and Rhoecus, both Samian sculptors, about the middle of the 6th century B.C. Pausanias specially mentions that one of the oldest statues he had ever seen was a large figure of Zeus in Sparta, made of hammered bronze plates riveted together. With increased skill in large castings, and the discovery of the use of cores, by which the fluid bronze was poured into a mere skin-like cavity, hammered or repoussé work was only used in the case of small objects in which lightness was
