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

202 THE POLYCHROME STYLE AND
Scythian stock, and which had been constituted under the influence
of a Hellenized Oriental art.
and Sassanid Persia.
The nearest analogy is the art of Parthia
On the other hand, it is probable that the development of the
Sarmatian animal style was strongly influenced by Scythian art :
for the Sarmatians took over most of the peculiarities of the Scythian
style, and adapted them to their own cherished and traditional motives.
In the Sarmatian style, as in the Scythian, we find animal extremities
formed as heads or figures of animals ; horns converted into ornament
contorted animals ; and so forth ; in the Siberian group, a predilection
also for northern fauna.
All these considerations lead me to suppose, that the Sarmatian
animal style originated in a stock of motives brought by the Sarmatians
from their old home ; and that the style developed under the
influence of the Scythian animal style, in particular of its northern
and eastern branch, the branch which we know from the monuments
of the Kuban on the one hand, and those of Minussinsk and the Altai
mountains on the other.
A distinguishing feature of the Sarmatian animal style is its
polychromy. The Scythian animal style is almost entirely monochrome.
We have already spoken of Sarmatian polychromy, and
need not discuss it here. It is possible that polychromy formed an
integral part of the Sarmatian animal style from the outset.
We noticed above that there were two branches of Sarmatian
jewellery : the southern, on the Kuban and in the state of the Bosphorus
; and the northern, on the Don and in Siberia. It was the
northern branch which cultivated the animal style, of which there
are only vestiges in the southern branch. These vestiges it carried
with it into western Europe, in particular the use of birds' heads for
ornament. Birds' heads, as we know, played an important part in
the so-called Merovingian and Gothic style of jewellery. The Scytho-
Sarmatian animal style left a few other traces in the ' Gothic ' jewellery
of the West. For example, the combinations of birds' heads, the
friezes of crouching animals, and the like. More significant, but more
difficult to determine, is the influence of the northern branch of
Scytho-Sarmatian jewellery, the branch which preserved its love for
the animal style.
I spoke of the northern branch in my sixth chapter. I showed
that there was a powerful revival of this style on the Kuban, and to
some extent in Siberia. In its finest products, such as the Maikop
belt or some of the plaques from Siberia, it reached a very high
artistic level. Some of the Siberian plaques exhibit a tendency
;