History of art . which was oneof the first to receive the Portu-guese navigators and in whichthere developed, doudtless aboutthe end of the Middle Ages, thegreatest school of Africa, had ad-mirable bronze workers. By theirpowerful feeling for embryoniclife they became very near re-latives of the archaic Chinesesculptors, of the Khmers and theJavanese. They twisted blackserpents together to make of therough and scaly coils in whichthey writhe the supports forcopper stools. Their pots oftentook on the aspect of a humanhead and with lines of greatpurity; other vessels were orna-mented with strong
History of art . which was oneof the first to receive the Portu-guese navigators and in whichthere developed, doudtless aboutthe end of the Middle Ages, thegreatest school of Africa, had ad-mirable bronze workers. By theirpowerful feeling for embryoniclife they became very near re-latives of the archaic Chinesesculptors, of the Khmers and theJavanese. They twisted blackserpents together to make of therough and scaly coils in whichthey writhe the supports forcopper stools. Their pots oftentook on the aspect of a humanhead and with lines of greatpurity; other vessels were orna-mented with strongly built rude,and very summary sculptures inwhich the familiar silhouettes ofthe dog, the lion, the cock, theelephant, and the crocodile are in-dicated, sometimes with a strongtinge of irony. At this period,in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, Africa seemed, more-over, to be emerging from its long nightmare. TheBushmen, contemporaries of the Negroes of Benin,peopled the south of the continent; far from the. Polynesia. Sculpture in wood. {British Museum.) 176 MEDIEVAL ART equator, the deserts, and the forests of Central Africa,they lived in a healthier climate where stock raising ispossible, where wild beasts are rarer and game isabundant. They could, had they persisted, have givena decisive impetus to the mind of the Negro more often from rapine than from hunting, theirnomadic and adventurous life multiplied their relation-ships with the tribes and the soil of Africa at the sametime that it sharpened their senses and subtilized theirmind. On the walls of the grottoes, where they hid theherds they had stolen, they have left frescoes of redocher in which we see, living again, their hunts, theirwars, their dances, and beasts that flee or march inline. The form is only an approximation, but the flatspot is vibrant, and the silhouettes, looking like shadowson a wall, march with a single movement—oxen thatare pursued, antelopes climbing a slope, great graybirds c
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectart, bookyear1921
