Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION.
Modern culture owes to the civilisation of the ancient Greeks a profound debt, which is at once direct and indirect. The direct debt has arisen principally from the place long held by Greek studies in our system of education. The indirect debt, which is more subtle and less easily recognised, is that of many forces, inspirations, and models, in art, literature, and science, that have been transmitted to us from a remote past, through various peoples and through diverse civilisations. In our schools, and to a certain extent still in our colleges and universities, we understand by Greek studies almost exclusively the study of the language and literature of the ancient Hellenes. But the Hellenic spirit -- and it is this only that gives life to these studies -- has revealed itself in a novel and distinctly different manner, and with equal if not with greater vividness, delicacy, and force, in the manifold remains of Greek art, from the rudest specimens of the potter's industry, up to the glorious monuments due to the genius of the sculptor and architect in the service of religion. Greek studies, then, that leave out of view the art of the ancient Greeks, are onesided, fragmentary, and essentially defective.
It is for reasons like the above that a cordial welcome should be extended, not only by lovers of Greek art, but also by students and teachers of Greek, to such a book as M. Collignon's handbook, which aims modestly to introduce the reader to these monuments of art, to "orient" him, as it were, both as to their general character and as to their historical relations and connections.
A few words on the scope and method of the book, in part taken from the author's preface to the French edition, are perhaps not out of place.
Forming one of a series of educational works on art (Bibliotheque de VEnseignemeni des Beaux-Arts), it is above air an elementary text-book, designed for pupils in schools and colleges, and for amateurs in the study of art. The results of archaeological research arc as a rule recorded in elaborate scientific treatises or journals difficult of access to the average reader. These works, even when not in an unfamiliar language, are also commonly so technical in character as to disconcert and bewilder the beginner in his studies. Though there are, in some of the departments of classical archaeology -- as in sculpture, and in architecture -- and even, for certain groups of departments, excellent handbooks of the nature of introductions, there seems to be no book in English, in line with I recent research, which gives a bird's-eye view, as it were, of the whole field, especially of the archaeology of Greek art. The present book endeavours to supply this deficiency....
