Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

i82 THE POLYCHROME STYLE AND
On the question of origin he is less explicit, but he is inclined to
think, that the chief motives of the northern animal style were mostly
borrowed from late Roman art, I cannot discuss all these theories
here : I shall merely adduce certain facts which may prove useful to
future investigators.
Let us begin with the polychrome style. Polychromy had never
died out in the East : and from the Hellenistic period onwards, as we
have already seen, there was a powerful revival of polychromy in the
Iranian world. A similar revival took place in Semitic and Egyptian
quarters at the same time. It is among the Sarmatians that we can
best follow the revival of the polychrome style in its Iranian branch.
Among the Sarmatians, who were in touch with the Greeks of South
Russia, the style flourished with a vigour and an originality unequalled,
as far as we can see, in any other part of the Hellenistic world. All
the jewellery becomes polychrome. Various processes are employed :
open-
cloisonne, where the stones are enclosed by metal partitions ;
work, where the coloured substance is inserted into a metal network ;
champleve, where the stones or other coloured materials are let into
hollows : the first is the usual process, the others are less common.
Coloured enamels are sometimes, but seldom used as well as stones.
The variety of this style which we find in the valley of the Kuban
is more sober and more classical, and not so closely connected with
the animal style. In the valley of the Don, and in western Siberia,
the objects are more gaily coloured and more barbaric : the polychrome
style takes possession of the animal style and unites with it.
There is every reason to suppose that most of this polychrome
jewellery was manufactured, for export, in the workshops of various
Bosphoran cities. The Bosphoran artists adopted the Oriental fashion,
and used it to decorate the particular articles which their barbarian
customers required : pieces of armour and of horse trappings ; glass
and metal vases ; personal ornaments, such as crowns, tores, necklaces,
bracelets, metal-plated belts, fibulae and brooches, garment plaques,
and the like. In the Greek towns themselves the new fashion was
slow in establishing itself, and the objects in the polychrome style
are almost exclusively imports, probably from Greece, Asia Minor
and Syria, where the same period saw a great revival, under Persian
and Egyptian influence, of the polychrome style in jewellery. In these
imports, the principle of the polychromy, the technique and the whole
spirit are not the same as in the articles manufactured by Bosphoran
artists for Sarmatian customers : the Greco-Oriental branch is more
refined and more moderate, it makes more use of enamel, less
of coloured stones. But from the end of the first century A. d.,