A BOOK OF THE MOMENT.
THE ART OF OLD PERU.
The Art of Old Peru. Edited by Walter Lehmann, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Ethnological Institute of the Berlin Ethno- graphical Museum ; assisted by Heinrich Doering, Ph.D. (London : Ernest Berm, Ltd. £5 5s. net.) ALL men and women of intelligence and taste know that
deep in the night of time, or, at any rate, many centuries before the Incas ruled, there lived in Peru a nobler, a
more august people and one with a far greater appreciation of the arts than had the men of the communistic regime, which Pizarro overthrew. This old race made some of the most beautiful pottery that the world has ever known, and used the human face as a symbol and an instrument of decoration
and design in a more strange awl significant way than the face had ever before been used. - The only difficulty about a wider appreciation of pre-Inca art has been the rarity and seclusion of the collections in which that art has hitherto been enshrined. Men like the present writer, who first saw some small and casual illustration of the Art of old Peru a generation and more ago, have ever since longed for more and larger draughts from this enchanted goblet, but up till now have not been able to wet their lips. And now comes Dr. Walter Lehmann, Director of the Ethnological Institute of the Berlin Eth- nographical Museum, assisted by Dr. Heinrich Doering, and through the medium of a London publisher gives us a series of admirably produced illustrations from which we can satisfy our yearnings to know more of this strange gift of an undated race—a race which seems not merely to have pro- duced things comparable to the products of the Arts of Egypt and Greece and Assyria, and also of the Celtic and Scandina- vian Arts, but which had graces and wild flights of imagination that were all its own.
Take, for example, the admirable illustration to Plate 97. It shows a "Flat clay dish, knob handle and painting." That sounds dry—even dull. As a matter of fact, the flat dish is embellished with one of the most marvellous patterns of fish, tadpoles, and some strange things shaped like um- brellas, which are apparently swimming or floating in the basin of a round fountain. It has in certain ways an attrac- tion greater than that of the patterns of Egypt, or Greece, or even of Etruria. Another very wonderful plate is No. 63, apparently a mask. It has an extraordinary fascination. It first looks as if it was the product of some parallel move- ment to that of the Etruscan potters. But the more you look at it, the more the Etruscan inspiration which astonished and influenced the Greeks, and from which ultimately the noble terra-cotta of Florence sprang—the Florentine renaissance
inherited its inspiration not from the Greeks, but from the Etruscans—fades away. You see that the man whose fingers moulded this strange head was a creature quite aloof and distinct from anything we have hitherto known. There is the same feeling in many of the other illustrations. " Chimbote, profile of a small clay head," and " Chimbote, head of a blind man, part view of a clay vessel" (Plate 72) are wonderful, uncanny, almost menacing in their loveliness. We feel they have been lighted at the torch of elemental beauty.
In a sense more ordinary; but also more tremendous and more august, is the face that looks out at us from Plate 77.
"Woman's head in clay, unpainted." She is apparently an ordinary woman, but one feels far more distant from her than one does from even the oldest Egyptian or Assyrian sculpture. Plate 79, "large clay head," is a splendid piece of modelling. Eyes, nose, and mouth all tell their tale
-exactly as it ought to be told. For pure beauty it is hard to beat Plate 80, "large head in clay ; face and neck un- painted." It is a superb piece of modelling.
More primitive, but full of deep interest, is the curious painting on a clay vase entitled "dying warrior and jaguar." The jaguar is mostly out of the picture except his claws ; but they have a terrific look about them. The painter must surely have seen somebody being "done in" by one of the great cats of the Peruvian desert. For pure charm and beauty nothing can better the two vases on Plate 87. The thing which is of most general interest about these vases is that in the accomplishment and technique generally they have got far beyond the realistic stage. That is, they are not miraculous imitations like the work of th2 Cave-men, but the work of conscious artists who used their powers to say something, not merely to copy nature. Some- times the things they say are purely pleasurable : they awaken nothing but the aesthetic ecstasy. Sometimes they are anything but pleasurable, and afford us a glimpse into the dark recesses of the mind of primitive man—that awful prison-house of the soul from which one's first and governing impulse is to avert the face. They are never really merry or even happy, these men of Peru. Even when the people depicted are dancing or playing on musical instru- ments they alarm the soul. Take, for instance, Plate 65, which we venture to think is wrongly described as "sitting dead figure or cripple, playing a tambourine-like instrument, clay. On frieze, similar figures with pan pipes and great pitchers, above them a star (morning star ?)."
We have been so much fascinated by the pictures and have dwelt so much upon them that we have little space tc devote to the letterpress other than the descriptive table of plates from which we have already drawn. The pictures and accounts of the fortresses and other buildings of Ancient Peru are very wonderful.
Whether the ascriptions as to dates, or more simply guesses as to dates, are well founded and correct we shall make nu sort of atteinpt to say. One can only gaze with wonder and encourage more investigation so that some day scholars may be able to tell us more about the peoples and periods which produced these wonderful things. At present every- thing is conjectural. Till we know more, however, we can and should -simply enjoy the beauty of the work of these masters of the art of modelling in clay. They were also, it would seem, capable builders and painters with a fine sense of colour. Finally, their tapestry-work illustrated in this book was by no means without charm ; though on a comparison of merits it is far less important than the terra- cotta. With the needle the Peruvian workman can be beaten by hundreds of races and at hundreds of epochs. It is in the pure work of the potter's thumb that the Peruvians can challenge all that haughty Greece, insolent Etruria, or mysterious Egypt can bring for comparison. And they were good military engineers. Uncle Toby would have regarded them with love and awe for their fortification. One can hear him in a rapture declare that "all their re-entrant angles are right angles." Marshal Vauban could
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