CHALDÆO-ASSYRIAN PAINTING.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Babelon, _Manual of Oriental
Antiquities_; Botta, _Monument de Ninive_; Budge,
_Babylonian Life and History_; Duncker, _History of
Antiquity_; Layard, _Nineveh and its Remains_; Layard,
_Discoveries Among Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_; Lenormant,
_Manual of the Ancient History of the East_; Loftus,
_Travels in Chaldæa and Susiana_; Maspero, _Life in Ancient
Egypt and Assyria_; Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in
Chaldæa and Assyria_; Place, _Ninive et l'Assyrie_; Sayce,
_Assyria: Its Palaces, Priests, and People_.
TIGRIS-EUPHRATES CIVILIZATION: In many respects the civilization along
the Tigris-Euphrates was like that along the Nile. Both valleys were
settled by primitive peoples, who grew rapidly by virtue of favorable
climate and soil, and eventually developed into great nations headed
by kings absolute in power. The king was the state in Egypt, and in
Assyria the monarch was even more dominant and absolute. For the
Pharaohs shared architecture, painting, and sculpture with the gods;
but the Sargonids seem to have arrogated the most of these things to
themselves alone.
Religion was perhaps as real in Assyria as in Egypt, but it was less
apparent in art. Certain genii, called gods or demons, appear in the
bas-reliefs, but it is not yet settled whether they represent gods or
merely legendary heroes or monsters of fable. There was no great
demonstration of religion by form and color, as in Egypt. The
Assyrians were Semites, and religion with them was more a matter of
the spirit than the senses--an image in the mind rather than an image
in metal or stone. The temple was not eloquent with the actions and
deeds of the gods, and even the tomb, that fruitful source of art in
Egypt, was in Chaldæa undecorated and in Assyria unknown. No one knows
what the Assyrians did with their dead, unless they carried them back
to the fatherland of the race, the Persian Gulf region, as the native
tribes of Mesopotamia do to this day.
ART MOTIVES: As in Egypt, there were two motives for art--illustration
and decoration. Religion, as we have seen, hardly obtained at all. The
king attracted the greatest attention. The countless bas-reliefs, cut
on soft stone slabs, were pages from the history of the monarch in
peace and war, in council, in the chase, or in processional rites.
Beside him and around him his officers came in for a share of the
background glory. Occasionally the common people had representations
of their lives and their pursuits, but the main subject of all the
valley art was the king and his doings. Sculpture and painting were
largely illustrations accompanying a history written in the
ever-present cuneiform characters.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--ENAMELLED BRICK. NIMROUD. (FROM PERROT AND
CHIPIEZ.)]
But, while serving as history, like the picture-writings of the
Egyptians, this illustration was likewise decoration, and was designed
with that end in view. Rows upon rows of partly colored bas-reliefs
were arranged like a dado along the palace-wall, and above them
wall-paintings, or glazed tiles in patterns, carried out the color
scheme. Almost all of the color has now disappeared, but it must have
been brilliant at one time, and was doubtless in harmony with the
architecture. Both painting and sculpture were subordinate to and
dependent upon architecture. Palace-building was the chief pursuit,
and the other arts were called in mainly as adjuncts--ornamental
records of the king who built.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--ENAMELLED BRICK. KHORSABAD. (FROM PERROT AND
CHIPIEZ.)]
THE TYPE, FORM, COLOR: There were only two distinct faces in Assyrian
art--one with and one without a beard. Neither of them was a portrait
except as attributes or inscriptions designated. The type was
unendingly repeated. Women appeared in only one or two isolated cases,
and even these are doubtful. The warrior, a strong, coarse-membered,
heavily muscled creation, with a heavy, expressionless, Semitic face,
appeared everywhere. The figure was placed in profile, with eye and
bust twisted to show the front view, and the long feet projected one
beyond the other, as in the Nile pictures. This was the Assyrian ideal
of strength, dignity, and majesty, established probably in the early
ages, and repeated for centuries with few characteristic variations.
The figure was usually given in motion, walking, or riding, and had
little of that grace seen in Egyptian painting, but in its place a
great deal of rude strength. In modelling, the human form was not so
knowingly rendered as the animal. The long Eastern clothing probably
prevented the close study of the figure. This failure in anatomical
exactness was balanced in part by minute details in the dress and
accessories, productive of a rich ornamental effect.
Hard stone was not found in the Mesopotamian regions. Temples were
built of burnt brick, bas-reliefs were made upon alabaster slabs and
heightened by coloring, and painting was largely upon tiles, with
mineral paints, afterward glazed by fire. These glazed brick or tiles,
with figured designs, were fixed upon the walls, arches, and
archivolts by bitumen mortar, and made up the first mosaics of which
we have record. There was a further painting upon plaster in
distemper, of which some few traces remain. It did not differ in
design from the bas-reliefs or the tile mosaics.
The subjects used were the Assyrian type, shown somewhat slighter in
painting than in sculpture, animals, birds, and other objects; but
they were obviously not attempts at nature. The color was arbitrary,
not natural, and there was little perspective, light-and-shade, or
relief. Heavy outline bands of color appeared about the object, and
the prevailing hues were yellow and blue. There was perhaps less
symbolism and more direct representation in Assyria than in Egypt.
There was also more feeling for perspective and space, as shown in
such objects as water and in the mountain landscapes of the late
bas-reliefs; but, in the main, there was no advance upon Egypt. There
was a difference which was not necessarily a development. Painting, as
we know the art to-day, was not practised in Chaldæa-Assyria. It was
never free from a servitude to architecture and sculpture; it was
hampered by conventionalities; and the painter was more artisan than
artist, having little freedom or individuality.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--WILD ASS. BAS-RELIEF, BRITISH MUSEUM. (FROM
PERROT AND CHIPIEZ.)]
HISTORIC PERIODS: Chaldæa, of unknown antiquity, with Babylon its
capital, is accounted the oldest nation in the Tigris-Euphrates
valley, and, so far as is known, it was an original nation producing
an original art. Its sculpture (especially in the Tello heads), and
presumably its painting, were more realistic and individual than any
other in the valley. Assyria coming later, and the heir of Chaldæa,
was the
Second Empire: There are two distinct periods of this Second Empire, the
first lasting from 1,400 B.C., down to about 900 B.C., and in art
showing a great profusion of bas-reliefs. The second closed about 625
B.C., and in art produced much glazed-tile work and a more elaborate
sculpture and painting. After this the Chaldæan provinces gained the
ascendency again, and Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar, became the first
city of Asia. But the new Babylon did not last long. It fell before
Cyrus and the Persians 536 B.C. Again, as in Egypt, the earliest art
appears the purest and the simplest, and the years of Chaldæo-Assyrian
history known to us carry a record of change rather than of progress in
art.
ART REMAINS: The most valuable collections of
Chaldæo-Assyrian art are to be found in the Louvre and the
British Museum. The other large museums of Europe have
collections in this department, but all of them combined are
little compared with the treasures that still lie buried in
the mounds of the Tigris-Euphrates valley. Excavations have
been made at Mugheir, Warka, Khorsabad, Kouyunjik, and
elsewhere, but many difficulties have thus far rendered
systematic work impossible. The complete history of
Chaldæo-Assyria and its art has yet to be written.
PERSIAN PAINTING.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before cited, Babelon, Duncker,
Lenormant, Ely; Dieulafoy, _L'Art Antique de la Perse_;
Flandin et Coste, _Voyage en Perse_; Justi, _Geschichte des
alten Persiens_; Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in
Persia_.
HISTORY AND ART MOTIVES: The Medes and Persians were the natural
inheritors of Assyrian civilization, but they did not improve their
birthright. The Medes soon lost their power. Cyrus conquered them, and
established the powerful Persian monarchy upheld for two hundred years
by Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes. Substantially the same conditions
surrounded the Persians as the Assyrians--that is, so far as art
production was concerned. Their conceptions of life were similar, and
their use of art was for historic illustration of kingly doings and
ornamental embellishment of kingly palaces. Both sculpture and
painting were accessories of architecture.
Of Median art nothing remains. The Persians left the record, but it
was not wholly of their own invention, nor was it very extensive or
brilliant. It had little originality about it, and was really only an
echo of Assyria. The sculptors and painters copied their Assyrian
predecessors, repeating at Persepolis what had been better told at
Nineveh.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--LIONS' FRIEZE, SUSA. (FROM PERROT AND CHIPIEZ.)]
TYPES AND TECHNIC: The same subjects, types, and technical methods in
bas-relief, tile, and painting on plaster were followed under Darius
as under Shalmanezer. But the imitation was not so good as the
original. The warrior, the winged monsters, the animals all lost
something of their air of brutal defiance and their strength of
modelling. Heroes still walked in procession along the bas-reliefs and
glazed tiles, but the figure was smaller, more effeminate, the hair
and beard were not so long, the drapery fell in slightly indicated
folds at times, and there was a profusion of ornamental detail. Some
of this detail and some modifications in the figure showed the
influence of foreign nations other than the Greek; but, in the main,
Persian art followed in the footsteps of Assyrian art. It was the last
reflection of Mesopotamian splendor. For with the conquest of Persia
by Alexander the book of expressive art in that valley was closed,
and, under Islam, it remains closed to this day.
ART REMAINS: Persian painting is something about which
little is known because little remains. The Louvre contains
some reconstructed friezes made in mosaics of stamped brick
and square tile, showing figures of lions and a number of
archers. The coloring is particularly rich, and may give
some idea of Persian pigments. Aside from the chief museums
of Europe the bulk of Persian art is still seen half-buried
in the ruins of Persepolis and elsewhere.
PHOENICIAN, CYPRIOTE, AND ASIA MINOR PAINTING.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before cited, Babelon, Duncker, Ely,
Girard, Lenormant; Cesnola, _Cyprus_; Cesnola, _Cypriote
Antiquities in Metropolitan Museum of Art_; Kenrick,
_Phoenicia_; Movers, _Die Phonizier_; Perrot and Chipiez,
_History of Art in Phoenicia and Cyprus_; Perrot and
Chipiez, _History of Art in Sardinia, Judea, Syria and Asia
Minor_; Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in Phrygia,
Lydia, etc._; Renan, _Mission de Phénicie_.
THE TRADING NATIONS: The coast-lying nations of the Eastern
Mediterranean were hardly original or creative nations in a large
sense. They were at different times the conquered dependencies of
Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece, and their lands were but bridges over
which armies passed from east to west or from west to east. Located on
the Mediterranean between the great civilizations of antiquity they
naturally adapted themselves to circumstances, and became the
middlemen, the brokers, traders, and carriers of the ancient world.
Their lands were not favorable to agriculture, but their sea-coasts
rendered commerce easy and lucrative. They made a kingdom of the sea,
and their means of livelihood were gathered from it. There is no
record that the Egyptians ever traversed the Mediterranean, the
Assyrians were not sailors, the Greeks had not yet arisen, and so
probably Phoenicia and her neighbors had matters their own way.
Colonies and trading stations were established at Cyprus, Carthage,
Sardinia, the Greek islands, and the Greek mainland, and not only
Eastern goods but Eastern ideas were thus carried to the West.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--PAINTED HEAD FROM EDESSA. (FROM PERROT AND
CHIPIEZ.)]
Politically, socially, and religiously these small middle nations were
inconsequential. They simply adapted their politics or faith to the
nation that for the time had them under its heel. What semi-original
religion they possessed was an amalgamation of the religions of other
nations, and their gods of bronze, terra-cotta, and enamel were
irreverently sold in the market like any other produce.
ART MOTIVES AND METHODS: Building, carving, and painting were
practised among the coastwise nations, but upon no such extensive
scale as in either Egypt or Assyria. The mere fact that they were
people of the sea rather than of the land precluded extensive or
concentrated development. Politically Phoenicia was divided among
five cities, and her artistic strength was distributed in a similar
manner. Such art as was produced showed the religious and decorative
motives, and in its spiritless materialistic make-up, the commercial
motive. It was at the best a hybrid, mongrel art, borrowed from many
sources and distributed to many points of the compass. At one time it
had a strong Assyrian cast, at another an Egyptian cast, and after
Greece arose it accepted a retroactive influence from there.
It is impossible to characterize the Phoenician type, and even the
Cypriote type, though more pronounced, varies so with the different
influences that it has no very striking individuality. Technically
both the Phoenician and Cypriote were fair workmen in bronze and
stone, and doubtless taught many technical methods to the early
Greeks, besides making known to them those deities afterward adopted
under the names of Aphrodite, Adonis, and Heracles, and familiarizing
them with the art forms of Egypt and Assyria.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--CYPRIOTE VASE DECORATION. (FROM PERROT AND
CHIPIEZ.)]
As for painting, there was undoubtedly figured decoration upon walls
of stone and plaster, but there is not enough left to us from all the
small nations like Phoenicia, Judea, Cyprus, and the kingdoms of
Asia Minor, put together, to patch up a disjointed history. The first
lands to meet the spoiler, their very ruins have perished. All that
there is of painting comes to us in broken potteries and color traces
on statuary. The remains of sculpture and architecture are of course
better preserved. None of this intermediate art holds much rank by
virtue of its inherent worth. It is its influence upon the West--the
ideas, subjects, and methods it imparted to the Greeks--that gives it
importance in art history.
ART REMAINS: In painting chiefly the vases in the
Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Louvre, British and
Berlin Museums. These give a poor and incomplete idea of the
painting in Asia Minor, Phoenicia and her colonies. The
terra-cottas, figurines in bronze, and sculptures can be
studied to more advantage. The best collection of Cypriote
antiquities is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. A new
collection of Judaic art has been recently opened in the
Louvre.