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

206 THE POLYCHROME STYLE AND
vases : these elements were probably borrowed directly, together
with the figures of warriors and hunters, from Parthian art.
I cannot develop my ideas on this subject more fully in this place.
It is enough for my purpose to have proved the diffusion of Sarmatian
culture and art to the East. It is no wonder that this powerful art
spread to the West as well; and, particularly in its eastern, purely
Oriental form, to the North, to the forests and swamps of Northern
Europe,
I have already referred to the influence of the Scythian animal style
upon the Iron Age in central and eastern Russia. The objects found
at Ananyino and at Zuevskoe reproduce many of the motives which
are characteristic of the Scythian animal style in the fifth and fourth
Fig. 23.
centuries B.C. Later finds, of the Hellenistic and Roman epoch, in
the region of Perm, give token of the same influence, which evidently
spread along the Russian rivers to North Russia and the Baltic Sea.
The animal style of North Russia preserves all the peculiarities of the
eastern and northern branch of the Sarmatian animal style : animal
extremities terminating in heads and beaks of birds or griffins ;
animal motive piled on animal motive, often in strange combinations ;
motives repeated in continuous series, sometimes forming a kind of
fantastic lattice-work which immediately recalls Sarmatian art (fig. 23).
Now in examining this style, one cannot fail to recognize the
remarkable analogies which it presents with the animal style of the
Scandinavian countries.
I am not a specialist in the art of northern Germany and Scandi-
navia. I have studied the works on the subject, especially the classic