File:The Open court (1887) (14588034518).jpg

Identifier: opencourt_oct1911caru (find matches)
Title: The Open court
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors: Carus, Paul, 1852-1919 Open Court Publishing company, Chicago
Subjects: Religion Religion and science
Publisher: Chicago : The Open Court Pub. Co.
Contributing Library: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Digitizing Sponsor: CARLI: Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois

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t, admiring theseworks, had robbed it of much of its portable treasures. The mer-chants of the West trafficking back and forth—the East was thenthe great storehouse of the world, the land of gold and of promise,and was in much the same relation to the West as America was re-garded by Europe in the seventeenth century—had left stations,settlements all along the great highways from India to Rome, and to THE INFLUENCE OF ORIENTAL ART. 601 the north, built after the manner of the East, and filled with itsproductions. All about Constantinople were such stations, such in-fluences ; all breathed of Persia and of Arabia, Araby the blest,and of far-off India. The founders of the new capital were thus already familiar withOriental art, and now as they set about building- their city, and be-came subject to the still closer influence of that art, being men notat all of an inventive race anyway, they were most susceptible to thefascination of their surroundings. Therefore it is not at all sur-
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ARABIAN BRICK WORK. TILE AND ENAMEL WORK OF THE SARACENS. The more crude structurally ornamented brick work of the Arabianssuggested and preceded the almost feminine refinement of the artin Mohammedan hands. prising that they adopted the delicate, sensuous and graceful art oftheir new neighborhood rather than that of their fathers, let aloneany prejudice they might have had against the latter for the religiousreasons I have before mentioned, and notwithstanding that theyhad the quarries and the forests and the laborers of the world todraw upon for even cyclopean construction had they desired it,rather than the dainty arcades, traceries and mosaics they used. Some wise men of the West have attempted to trace Grecianinfluence in the art of the new capital. Grecian influence, forsooth! 602 THE OPEN COURT. Greece was dead, despoiled, forgotten, no longer visited; its civili-zation, carried to Rome long before, had become debased, deformedand finally replaced entirely by Asiatic influences

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