_ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE AND PAINTING._
§ I. STATUES, STELÆ, AND OBELISKS.
The brilliant period of Chaldæan statuary, which reached the apogee of
its development in the monuments of Tello, came to an end with the fall
of the petty principalities which flourished in Lower Mesopotamia before
the Ninevite supremacy. Chaldæan statuary did not emigrate to Assyria
with the other arts, or rather the Assyrians disdained to receive it.
The principal cause which prevented this art from developing among the
Ninevites was the nearness of the alabaster quarries, and the absence of
marble, diorite, porphyry and other kinds of stone which allow of being
carved in the round. Alabaster can only be hewn in thin, flat pieces,
which, for this reason, lend themselves admirably to be carved in
bas-relief, but are unsuitable for statuary. An alabaster statue of
ordinary human proportions would be extremely fragile, and would run the
risk of crumbling away in flakes, at any rate in the thinnest parts,
such as the feet and hands. On the other hand, the abundance of
alabaster in the neighbourhood of Nineveh caused the Assyrians to
dispense with the importation from distant countries, at great cost, of
blocks of diorite and porphyry like those which the Chaldæans, who
possessed neither alabaster nor any other stone, were obliged to procure
at any price. At least we must admit that up to the present time the
excavations in Assyria have scarcely yielded to our curiosity anything
that can enable us to assert that statuary flourished in Northern
Mesopotamia. On the contrary, the few Assyrian statues that have come
down to us prove the poverty and neglected condition of this branch of
sculpture. The principal objects that can be cited are two statues of
the god Nebo at the British Museum, a statue of the King Assur-nasir-pal
(B.C. 882-857), and two other figures of priests which took the place of
Caryatids at Khorsabad.
[Illustration: Fig. 61.--Statue of Assur-nasir-pal (British Museum).]
The statue of Assur-nasir-pal represents this king dressed in a long
robe without folds and devoid of ornament, which almost gives him the
appearance of a cylindrical Terminus. His beard and hair lie close to
his head and neck, and in each part it is evident that the artist,
through want of skill or on account of the difficulties he felt in
dealing with the block which he had to fashion, did not dare to
attribute to the limbs a suppleness and ease that would have damaged
their solidity, nor to give to the beard and the delicate parts of his
work a finish which would have run the risk of splitting the stone.
The fringes of the robe are only indicated by slight strokes of the
burin; the arms are united to the bust, and so are the sceptre and the
crook which the monarch holds in his hands.
[Illustration: Fig. 62.--Statue in the hareem at Khorsabad (after
Place).]
The Atlantes found in front of the enamelled walls of the hareem at
Khorsabad seem to have been employed in the structure as true columns;
on their head-dress they support a square plinth which bears witness to
their architectural function; their figures are of more than human
stature. From the sacred vase which they press reverently to their
breast, and which we have already seen in Chaldæa, flow four streams,
which recall the four rivers of Paradise in Genesis; two of these liquid
jets fall directly upon their feet, while the two others, rising over
their shoulders, fall down their back to their feet in slightly
undulating bands.[36]
The scenes upon the bas-reliefs in the interior of the palace chambers
sometimes represent processions in which deities, standing or seated,
are carried upon litters by priests or slaves (fig. 114): so there were
statues at Nineveh. It is doubtful, however, whether these discoveries
give any other impression of Assyrian statuary than that which we have
described.
[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Stela of Samsi-Rammanu (British Museum).]
Instead of statues, the Assyrians often erected stelæ and obelisks--a
kind of monument which holds, so to speak, the middle place between
statues and bas-reliefs. Among the stelæ the most finished type is that
of King Samsi-Rammanu III. (B.C. 822--809). It is a monolith of slightly
trapezoidal form, rounded in the upper part. The sides are covered with
a cuneiform inscription which relates year by year the military exploits
of the prince. On the anterior surface, surrounded by a border which
forms a frame, the king, in high relief and seen in profile, stands in
adoration before the planetary symbols. It is clear at the first glance
that the artist has been bolder than he would have been in dealing with
a statue in the round. The feet and arms are freer and not held so
closely to the figure; far from treating the details of the costume
roughly, he takes pleasure, on the contrary, in laying exaggerated
stress upon them.
In the British Museum are small stelæ of a later date, bearing figures
of Assur-bani-pal (B.C. 668-666). They show the king holding a basket
upon his head, in the same attitude as the early Canephorœ of Chaldæa
(see above, p. 37, fig. 25).
[Illustration: Fig. 64.--Stela of Assur-bani-pal (British Museum).]
[Illustration: Fig. 65.--Obelisk of Shalmaneser (British Museum).]
Assyrian obelisks, which have nothing in common with the gigantic
Egyptian monoliths to which this name is given, are, like the stelæ,
large boundary stones set up in honour of the exploits of some prince,
sometimes on the very field of battle, or on the ruins of a conquered
town. The most complete and best preserved of these monuments is the
obelisk of Shalmaneser III. (B.C. 857-822) found at Nimroud. This is a
monolith scarcely more than 6½ feet high; it is a square pillar,
slightly pyramidal in form. The upper part is arranged in steps which
recede from one another on all sides; the summit forms a platform, and
has nothing to surmount it: perhaps a statuette of the king or his
favourite deity formerly stood there. The four faces of the obelisk are
covered with inscriptions and bas-reliefs arranged in rows one above the
other. The lower part, which is entirely bare, must have been buried up
to a certain point in the ground.
As we see, the stelæ and obelisks, which take the place of statues, are
in a technical point of view derived from the bas-reliefs. If any
Assyrian statues are brought us by future discoveries, they will always
be few in number, and poor and timid in style; there is nothing among
them to be compared to the Chaldæan statues, and above all nothing to be
placed side by side with the innumerable Egyptian statues, the style of
which sometimes almost attains to the perfection of Greek art; Assyria
also was destined to approach this ideal, but only in bas-relief.
Such was the logical consequence of the natural difference of the
environments in which the empires of Egypt and Assyria, those two poles
around which the whole of the ancient East gravitates, were evolved. On
the banks of the Nile, stone suited for sculpture exists in profusion,
and as there was abundant material in the hands of the artist, he was
able to devote himself to incessant experiments, essays and trials,
which, progressively repeated from generation to generation, only
stopped at the threshold of Greek art. In Mesopotamia there was little
or no stone to carve; it was only rarely and at great expense that
precious blocks were brought with much trouble from a long distance, and
these were too dear and too scarce to allow of numerous experiments.
§ II. BAS-RELIEFS.
To conceal the poverty of the material of their brick or clay
structures, the Assyrians, as we have said, conceived the idea of lining
the walls with thin slabs of limestone or gypseous alabaster of a
yellowish shade, which they extracted at small expense from the
neighbouring mountains of Nineveh. These slabs could be sculptured and
polished with marvellous ease.
[Illustration: Fig. 66.--Assur-nasir-pal sacrificing a bull (Bas-relief
in the British Museum).]
The most ancient bas-reliefs that the excavations in Assyria have
brought to light come from the palace of Assur-nasir-pal (B.C. 882-857)
at Calah (Nimroud). What a distance there is between this epoch and that
of the ruins of Tello! But from the reign of this prince to the fall of
Nineveh, towards the end of the seventh century--that is to say, during
three centuries--there is an abundance of documents for the history of
sculpture; they have been disinterred principally from the palaces of
Assur-nasir-pal, Shalmaneser, Samsi-Rammanu, Rammanu-nirari,
Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal,--palaces
which these princes had built in order to immortalise their fame, and
the walls of which they covered with the scenes of their valour and the
narrative of their exploits.
[Illustration: Fig. 67.--Genius with the beak of an eagle (Bas-relief at
the Louvre).]
[Illustration: Fig. 68.--Two-winged genius (Bas-relief at the British
Museum).]
Besides the interior walls of the chambers, no bas-reliefs were found in
the palaces except on the principal façade. These sculptures on the
façade have peculiar characteristics upon which we must lay stress. In
the first place, they are exclusively devoted to religious and
mythological subjects: not the smallest allusion is found to the
exploits of the prince. They represent especially divine heroes, winged
genii with human bodies and eagles’ claws and beaks, winged lions and
bulls which guard the royal residence and defend the approaches to it,
whether against evil spirits or against
[Illustration: Fig. 69.--Four-winged genius, Khorsabad (Louvre, 9 ft. 10
in. high).]
foreign invasion. Accordingly the figures in these exterior sculptures
are of colossal proportions, as it is fitting for gods and heroes. There
was also a reason drawn from the laws of perspective in this enlargement
of the figures, since the façade of the palace was intended to be seen
at a greater distance. The winged bulls at the Louvre, which come from
Khorsabad, are from 13 ft. to 16 ft. high. The groups which represent
Izdubar, the Assyrian Hercules, strangling a lion under his arm, are as
much as 19½ ft. The Assyrians multiplied their winged bulls at the
entrance of the doors. Twenty-six pairs of them were found in the palace
of Sargon, and as many as ten in a single façade of the palace of
Sennacherib. Assyrian texts speak of them as _kirubi_ (cherubim?) or
_sedi_ (genii). The considerable projection of their figures from the
walls makes them partake of the bas-relief and of the statue in the
round at the same time. Some of these bulls have a relief of about 8
in.; placed at the corner of the doors to support the archivolt, they
seemed, like Atlas upholding the world, to bear upon their heads the
whole mass of the building. Carved on two sides, they are like statues
half-buried in the thickness of the wall. They were generally arranged
in fours, two being on the plane of the wall, facing one another on each
side of the door, and the other two facing the visitor as he entered,
while their heads stood out from the façade and their hinder parts
remained inside the passage. The visitor arriving from without saw
before him at once the bodies of the first two in profile and the full
face of the two others. Before the building or within the doorway he
still saw at the same time full faces and bodies in profile. By an
illusion, he seemed to behold continually, and in every position, the
whole of a bearded monster, with his thick mane on his chest, his neck
furnished with tufts of hair, his legs, in which the muscles, speaking
emblems of material strength, are powerfully marked, his wings formed of
rows of plumes, and reaching, like gigantic fans, as high as the
archivolt.
[Illustration: Fig. 70.--Winged and human-headed lion (British Museum).]
Except in the palace of Sennacherib, these winged bulls, in order that
the illusion may be more complete, are represented with five legs; two
hind legs and three fore legs, of which two are straight and one is
bent. The object of this trick was always to show four legs, whatever
might be the position of the spectator. In fact, standing before the
beast, the spectator sees his two fore legs; on the side, one of these
two being no longer visible, the artist has replaced it by a third which
is seen in profile in the background. This quaint device of the Assyrian
sculptor is never met with in Egypt.
[Illustration: Fig. 71.--Front face of a winged bull from Khorsabad
(Louvre).]
The philosophical idea expressed in these bulls and lions, these
impassible and majestic sentinels, is that of physical strength, calm
and sure of itself; it is the conception of the Egyptian sphinxes and of
the Græco-Roman Hercules in repose, with a half-smile upon his face.
Only, while in the Greek Hercules the human element alone comes in, and
in the Egyptian Sphinx there are only two elements, the man and the
lion, four, and even more, are found in the Assyrian _Kirubu_: the man,
the bull, the lion, and the eagle. The artist’s chief merit is that he
was able to give fair proportions to this fantastic beast, and to
combine these various elements which he borrowed from nature, so as to
create a figure of harmonious forms, in which nothing shocks the taste,
and the expression of which is noble, majestic, and natural. To us,
though we are the children of another civilisation, nothing seems
grotesque or deformed in these fine and vigorous creations of the
Assyrian genius, which could, as skilfully as the Egyptian genius,
associate the human form with the animal form in the symbolic
representation of deity and of supernatural beings. It is on the banks
of the Tigris that we find the prototypes of the Loves, the Centaurs,
the Chimæras, the Sphinxes, the Gryphons, the Pegasi, the Hippocampi of
Greek art.
[Illustration: Fig. 72.--Battle scene (Bas-relief from Nimroud, British
Museum).]
It has been calculated that the series of bas-reliefs from the halls of
Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad, placed end to end, would form a line a
mile and a half long. Those who have visited the British Museum will
remember the Nimroud and Kouyunjik galleries, and the Assyrian Basement,
each one of which is larger than the Assyrian gallery at the Louvre.
What a quantity of material for writing the history of Assyrian
sculpture during three centuries is here in our hands! In the interval
between every campaign, that is to say, between two springtides, the
king had bas-reliefs sculptured to exhibit before men’s eyes his prowess
in the chase or in war, and the manifold episodes of official life.
Taken as a whole, the sculptures in the interior of the palaces are
always in honour of the prince. Everything is for the king, who
symbolizes the life of his whole people; he does everything, and nothing
is accomplished except by his hands or by his orders; nowhere is the
ferocious egotism of Eastern monarchs more conspicuous than in these
bas-reliefs. Egyptian sculptures often contain scenes of civil life from
which the Pharaoh is excluded: agricultural labour, games, festivals,
public markets, and many other episodes in the existence of the ancient
Egyptian Fellaheen. In Assyria we find nothing of this sort; the
speaking walls repeat, without a moment’s pause, the warlike chronicle
of the kings.
[Illustration: Fig. 73.--The Assyrian army in a mountainous country
(Bas-relief from Nimroud, British Museum).]
This exclusively official side of the Ninevite sculptures compelled art
to confine itself to abstract types, created once for all, which,
multiplied to satiety, produce a certain fatigue in our minds. There is
no more
[Illustration: Fig. 74.--Siege of a fortress (Bas-relief from Khorsabad,
Louvre).]
proportion or scale in the Assyrian bas-reliefs than among the Egyptians
or the Chinese; perspective is absent, or rather the artists made vain
efforts to calculate and reproduce its effects. Men are taller than the
chariots that they mount and the horses which draw them; they even
overtop the fortresses that they besiege. As in Egypt, the king is
always represented as taller than his ministers, and in general the
Assyrians are taller than their enemies. Greek heroes, in classical art,
are also often taller than the warriors who surround them; the same
facts have been remarked in Chinese art. The practice is naïve, but it
is common to all arts and easily explained by the absence of
perspective. At the present day, when our artists can at their pleasure
arrange several planes in their pictures, and produce distances and
backgrounds in the scenes which they wish to render, they are satisfied
to make the important scene stand out and place the principal actors in
the foreground. Before perspective was understood and many planes could
thus be created, there was no means of bringing out the principal actors
except the device of a disproportionate enlargement.
Generally speaking, the Assyrian artist shows a fondness for picturesque
spots, mountains, and rivers. But he renders them with the strangest
errors in the relative proportions of the objects: for instance, the
fish among the waves are as large as the boats; the birds in the forests
are as large as the trees or the hunters; the vultures on the field of
battle are as big as the horses.
[Illustration: Fig. 75.--Navigation scene (Bas-relief from Khorsabad,
Louvre).]
When the artist wishes to reproduce the human countenance, he always
places the eye in full, even when the face is in profile. When the
sculptor is obliged to represent his figures in full face, or in any
other attitude than the simple profile, he is much embarrassed, and
shows his hesitation and his incapacity; unable to foreshorten the
feet, he draws them entirely in profile, while the whole of the upper
portion of the body is in full face--an error which gives an appearance
of dislocation to the figure. He turns the heads round as if they were
put on the wrong way; the hands present the same deformity: it might
sometimes be supposed that the artist has put them on backwards.
The principal efforts of the sculptor were aimed at the head, the legs,
and the arms. He makes the muscles stand out enormously, while they are
not always in their proper anatomical position. Bold curves form the
outline of the knee-cap and mark the leg-muscles and the biceps; the
feet and hands are not only clearly carved out, but chiselled to an
excessive depth. The Assyrians scarcely knew more than two types of the
human head, which they constantly reproduce: the bearded head and the
beardless head. An attempt may be made, however, to establish more exact
definitions and distinctions. The bearded head may wear its hair curled
in very short ringlets, or else the beard and the hair may be twisted in
parallel and symmetrical tresses: this last form is reserved for figures
of gods, heroes, kings, the chief functionaries of the court, and
soldiers. The beardless heads must be recognised as the type set apart
to represent eunuchs. These personages, some of whom played an important
part at court, like the Kislar-Agha, or chief of the black eunuchs at
Constantinople, are characterised by their fleshy and sensual
countenances.
Among the works of Chaldæan and Egyptian art there are faces which
belong to old men, to young men, and to children. In Assyria it may be
said that the faces never change, or rather three or four fixed types
are exclusively met with: kings, officers, slaves, and even gods, have
all the same physiognomy, which belongs to the age between youth and
maturity. When children are met with, they have a prematurely old
appearance, and their stature alone distinguishes them. The Ninevite
artists rarely represented women, and when they did so proved their
absolute inexperience. Their veiled women have vulgar features, from
which all ideas of physical beauty are banished. Examine the scene in
which King Assurbanipal and one of his wives are drinking from goblets
(fig. 77). The face of the queen is almost masculine in appearance; even
her hair is dressed like that of men; she wears a peculiar diadem, and
is draped in sumptuous robes, embroidered and enriched with jewels.
[Illustration: Fig. 76.--Eunuchs (Bas-relief from Khorsabad, Louvre).]
The Assyrian sculptor had not the skill to draw a true portrait and to
study individual likeness, except perhaps in certain royal heads.[37]
Nor had he the skill
[Illustration: Fig. 77.--Assurbanipal and his queen (Bas-relief from
Kouyunjik, British Museum).]
to give to the types which he created the least expression, betraying
any motion whatever of joy or sadness: his figures remain impassive,
whether taking part in joyous banquets, in the excitement of hunting, in
battle, or even amidst the most atrocious tortures. The countenance of
the Assyrian is always imperturbable, never laughs and never weeps; the
gestures of his arms alone are designed to express and interpret his
impressions. The hand raised and drawn back to the height of the nape of
the neck is a sign of introduction or of an appeal; the hand raised in
front of the mouth is a sign of mourning and of violent grief; the
hands held in such a way that one grasps the wrist of the other, make a
gesture which implies an acknowledgment of servitude and absolute
submission, due only to the sovereign or to the gods. Assyrians are
sometimes seen in the act of prayer, raising one hand as high as the
face, while the other hangs loosely by the side; but some adopt the
Christian posture in prayer, raising their two hands and pressing the
palms against one another.
[Illustration: Fig. 78.--Jewish type, from a bas-relief from the palace
of Sennacherib (British Museum).]
As the bas-reliefs of the Ninevite palaces are specially devoted to the
representation of the military campaigns of the kings against foreign
nations, the artist has often been led to draw men or women of distant
countries, distinguished from the Assyrians by their national costume or
by certain ethnographical characteristics. It is sometimes possible to
understand these distinctions between Assyrians and foreigners in the
sculptures: for instance, the Jewish type could scarcely be better
expressed at the present day than it is in the figure of one of the
captives coming to make their submission to King Sennacherib in his camp
before the walls of Lachish (fig. 78).
Moreover, with regard to the human form, the scope of Assyrian sculpture
was greatly limited in
[Illustration: Fig. 79.--Assurbanipal in his chariot (Bas-relief from
Kouyunjik, Louvre).]
consequence of the false modesty of the East, which was in existence in
ancient times as it is in our own day among the Arabs, and prevented
the artist from studying the human frame in the nude and in the living
model. The Assyrian, like the Arab, is always draped in his thick
burnoos, and this fashion, observed with religious strictness,
contributed to no small extent to the sudden arrest of the progress of
art. The long linen tunic, garnished with embroideries, only allows the
head, feet and fore-arm to be seen; the working dress of the slaves, or
sometimes the tunic of the soldiers, descends no further than the knee;
the large fringed shawl, when it is worn, envelops the body like the
Arab burnoos and the Roman toga.
[Illustration: Fig. 80.--Sargon (Bas-relief from Khorsabad, Louvre).]
The Assyrian, therefore, in consequence of a Semitic prejudice, could
never express natural and ideal beauty: herein lies his inferiority in
comparison with the Egyptian sculptor; we know from thousands of
examples how the artists of Thebes or Memphis treated the human torso,
and several of their statues and even of their bas-reliefs are
masterpieces. Rarely has the Ninevite sculptor ventured to represent the
human form in the state of nudity, except in the case of the goddess
Istar, and in that of a few figures of slaves or of corpses lying on the
battle-field; and these exceptional cases betray his complete want of
experience.
He tried to remedy the defect which we have just indicated by striving
after perfection in details. No art has treated with greater
complaisance and refinement all the features of the costume, not
forgetting a single tress of the hair or a single fringe in the drapery.
Here is, for instance, a bas-relief from Khorsabad (fig. 80), which
represents Sargon attended by an eunuch. Observe with what inimitable
perfection the embroidery of the tiara, of the mantle decorated with
rosettes, and of the robe with its elegant diaper pattern is rendered;
the silky softness of the fringes in the eunuch’s dress is almost to be
felt. The hands and feet, beard and hair, of the two figures, are
treated with the delicacy of a cameo. Secondary matters thus assume an
exaggerated importance detrimental to the effect of the whole; the
muscles are so strongly marked that they become monstrous; the relative
proportions of the different parts of the body are no longer conformed
to nature. In this respect again Assyrian sculpture remains greatly
inferior to its rival on the banks of the Nile. It cannot be too often
repeated that the minute study of detail and devotion to the infinitely
little ruined Assyrian art by helping to make it forget the general
features of the work; the sculptor, led astray by this false object,
looked at his figures too closely, omitting to improve their proportions
and to give them more suppleness, life, and movement; even when most
finished, they always give us an impression of geometrical stiffness.
[Illustration: Fig. 81.--Wounded lioness (Bas-relief from Kouyunjik,
British Museum).]
If the direct study of bodily forms was neglected by the Assyrian artist
in the case of human beings, it was not so in the case of animals.
Accordingly Ninevite sculpture shows itself to far greater advantage in
the representation of the animals of different kinds found in
Mesopotamia. In this province it may claim a considerable superiority
over Egyptian art, and reaches, in the time of Assurbanipal, that is to
say, at the moment before the fall of Nineveh, a degree of perfection
which may sustain comparison with the finest creations of Hellenic art.
Its masterpiece is the figure of a lioness succumbing to the shafts of
the hunters, from the palace of Assurbanipal at Kouyunjik. Her spinal
column is broken by an arrow which pierces it through; the blood gushes
in streams from the wound, but though on the point of expiring, the
savage beast makes a heroic effort to raise herself upon her forelegs
and to utter a last roar. In order to render this dramatic attitude with
so much truth, the artists must often have followed the royal hunting
expeditions and witnessed terrible scenes in the deserts where the wild
beasts had their haunts. Other bas-reliefs show us, with an almost
equally successful execution, lions springing on to the royal chariot,
dashing boldly towards the boats which plough the waters of the river,
or, on the other hand, lying carelessly asleep on the plain, and lazily
stretching out their limbs, the modelling of which is free and truthful.
[Illustration: Fig. 82.--Slaves carrying a lion and birds. Bas-relief
from Khorsabad (after Place).]
Next to the lion, the Assyrian artist takes the greatest pleasure in
representing the horse. In one scene it is the wild horse, starting and
bounding as he is caught by the lasso of the hunters; in another it is
the war-horse, dashing at full gallop towards the enemy, and ridden by a
warrior who draws his bow or brandishes his lance; or again it is the
draught-horse, harnessed to the royal chariot, trampling corpses under
his feet, or drawing the heavy waggons in which the booty from the
enemy’s country is transported into Assyria. Such was the skill of the
artist, that naturalists have been able to decide from the study of the
bas-reliefs what breeds of horses were produced in Assyria. The dog, the
goat and the sheep, the ibex and the wild boar, the bison and the wild
ass, the deer and the gazelle, the camel and the dromedary, are also
among the animals which frequently occur in the bas-reliefs designed to
perpetuate the memory of particularly successful hunting expeditions,
or of the capture of herds belonging to a vanquished people. The artist
took pleasure in placing them in the most fanciful attitudes, sometimes
with the happiest effect. It was also his delight to introduce in
procession the figures of foreign animals, sent to the King of Assyria
by tributary nations, such as the elephant, the ape, and the rhinoceros.
But the rarity of such animals in Mesopotamia explains the peculiar
clumsiness of the Assyrian sculptor in the reproduction of them. Here
are apes treated with an almost grotesque _naïveté_; they look like men
disguised in the skins of animals, and trying to walk on all fours (fig.
83).
[Illustration: Fig. 83.--Envoy bringing apes as tribute (Bas-relief from
Nimroud, British Museum).]
Among birds we find the eagle, the vulture and the gerfalcon hovering
heavily and ungracefully over the battlefields, though the anatomical
details of these birds are sometimes executed with skill.[38] The
ostrich, a sacred bird, appears on cylinders and among the embroidered
designs on official robes. Locusts, that plague of the whole East,
figure in the character of offerings to the gods, and, no doubt,
represent legions of evil spirits. In the rivers eels, crabs, and fish
are placed. In the field, on the mountains, or on the river-banks we
find palms and trees of every species, onions, ears of corn,
lotus-flowers, vines, marsh-plants. But if the scrupulous imitation of
nature sometimes leaves nothing to be desired in these sculptured forms,
ignorance of the laws of perspective has forced the artist to employ
devices of childish simplicity. Thus, to indicate that trees grow on
each side of a stream, he has placed them upright on the further bank,
and stem downwards on the nearer.
In the same way, when he wishes, for instance, to show us what passes
within the enclosure of a fortress (see fig. 57), he is reduced to
display it on the ground with the bastions and battlements in profile
around it, turned outward like the points of a coronet; at the same time
he arranges all his scenes within this enclosure in divisions one above
the other, without regard for the laws of proportion, and without even
taking the trouble to contain himself, as he has done with regard to the
enclosure, within the spaces marked out by radii starting from the
centre. By a further neglect of perspective, in the representation of an
ox or other horned animal, he places the horn in profile projecting
forwards from the head.
Besides the bas-reliefs which were displayed upon the walls of the
palace-chambers, there were secondary pieces of sculpture in which the
originality of the Assyrian genius comes to light. A notable example is
found in the decoration of the thresholds of the palaces, which were
carved in such a way that they looked like rich carpets. One of the most
remarkable of these is a large slab of gypsum found at Kouyunjik, (fig.
84), in which the lotus or tulip-flower is combined with rosettes, open
daisies and geometrical designs most harmonious in effect; nothing more
elegant in decorative sculpture has ever been conceived.
To sum up, Assyrian sculpture triumphs in the bas-relief, and in the
patient and minute labour of ornamental design. If the work of the
Ninevite chisel is compared to that of the Greeks in the archaic period,
down to the appearance of the Æginetan school, a surprising affinity
will be observed between them. The stela of Aristion, that primitive
Athenian bas-relief, known under the incorrect name of the _Warrior of
Marathon_, looks, at first sight, as if it had been taken from the walls
of Sargon’s or Sennacherib’s palace. At Khorsabad a cippus, acquired by
Victor Place, is adorned with parallel flutings terminating in a
hemisphere of elegant palmettes; it presents the appearance of a Greek
stela.[39]
[Illustration: Fig. 84.--Fragment of threshold, Kouyunjik (British
Museum).]
If we compare the sculpture of Kouyunjik, Nimroud, Khorsabad and Kalah
Shergat with one another, we observe, beneath the general uniformity
that we have indicated, differences important enough to enable us to
characterise the progress of art during the three centuries before the
fall of Nineveh, and not simply
[Illustration: Fig. 85.--Slaves dragging a winged bull. Bas-relief from
Kouyunjik (British Museum).]
the result of the varying talent of the artists. We seem to be able to
distinguish in Assyrian art, as we learn to know it in the bas-reliefs,
three periods or three successive developments. Under Assur-nasir-pal
the figures are already bold and powerful, but thick-set, and they
appear in small numbers in the scenes represented; their motions are
sober, but full of truth. The artist has the singular habit, only
observed in Assyrian art, of covering a portion of his figures with long
inscriptions explaining the scenes which he intends to portray (see fig.
83); we have already seen that the Chaldæan statues of Gudea are covered
with inscriptions, and Herodotus’ statement[40] that the figures of
“Sesostris” in Ionia, doubtless the Hittite figures described below,
bore inscriptions across their breasts is probably based on a confusion
with the Assyrian figures in Syria and elsewhere. Under Sargon and
Sennacherib, the sculptors became more experienced and more ambitious.
In their works the figures are far more numerous, and concur more
visibly in a common action; they have more life and movement; the scenes
representing battles, hunting expeditions, the worship of the gods, or
slaves engaged in public works are more varied; the gestures of the
figures are more marked and more energetic, the muscles of the legs and
arms more deeply outlined; lastly, the human forms are no longer covered
with inscriptions; these are placed at the side, as explanatory legends.
[Illustration: Fig. 86.--Deer hunt. Bas-relief from Khorsabad (after
Place).]
In the time of Assurbanipal, a more natural art, and one which conformed
more to the true principles of sculpture in bas-relief, came into being.
Instead of giants, we find on the contrary small figures forming a
series of pictures, containing the greatest variety of scene, and full
of freshness and action. This art reaches its apogee in the figure of
the lioness which we have cited (fig. 81). It must be added that all the
parts of the same bas-relief are seldom sculptured by the same artist,
and that figures of very unequal merit are met with. The master’s chisel
reserved for itself the principal personages, the royal train and the
officers who surrounded it; the disciples worked at the secondary
portions, the corpses of the enemy, the processions of prisoners, the
background of the landscape. Matters were not managed differently with
regard to the sculptures of the Parthenon.
§ III. PAINTING AND ENAMELLING.
The bricks which composed the structure of the walls in Chaldæan or
Assyrian edifices were nowhere visible. Above the slabs sculptured in
bas-relief and under the spring of the vaults a white stucco was
applied, made of plaster and lime, like that still used by the Orientals
to coat their houses; this custom explains the phrase “whited
sepulchres” in the Gospels. It was doubtless on a plaster of this nature
that the mysterious hand of which the Book of Daniel speaks traced out
Belshazzar’s sentence of condemnation on the night of the ill-famed
banquet: the sacred writer says that the hand wrote “on the plaster of
the wall.” This stucco was often decorated with paintings in distemper,
at any rate in the principal chambers, above the line of the
bas-reliefs.
Modern explorers have collected some fragments of these frescoes or
decorative paintings; at Warka, among the ruins of the temple called
Wuswas, Loftus acquired some which belong to the remotest Chaldæan
period. At Khorsabad, V. Place found on some pieces of stucco elegant
rosettes formed by the application and juxtaposition of very decided
colours: white, yellow, green, red, and black. One of the most
remarkable examples of this painting is a border of bulls painted white
on a yellow ground, their form being relieved by a broad black outline
(fig. 87). Above is a row of blue battlements; below festoons of many
colours. The effect is harmonious, though the tints are flat, and in
spite of the absence of all modelling in the figures.[41]
[Illustration: Fig. 87.--Painting on plaster, Nimroud (after Layard).]
The application of stucco of different colours is particularly
conspicuous in the construction of the staged towers, the terraces of
which are, beginning from the lowest, white, black, red, yellow,
vermilion, silver and gold. In the interior of the chambers, to avoid
the disagreeable contrast between the uniform whiteness of the stone
bas-reliefs and the brilliancy of the many-coloured paintings, the
fashion was to colour the figures in the bas-reliefs themselves. Some
traces of colouring may still be recognised in the sculptures preserved
in our museums, and though it is true that they are being gradually
effaced, they were quite evident when the slabs were disinterred. The
beard, hair, weapons, and even the face and costume of the figures were
coloured in a similar manner to the paintings on plaster, so that this
painted stucco seemed to be the continuation of the bas-reliefs. There
are, for instance, evident traces of vermilion paint[42] on the figures
of demons in the Assyrian basement of the British Museum. The Assyrians
obeyed the same laws of æsthetics as the mediæval artists, who applied
polychrome colouring to their marble or stone statues, to bring them
into perfect harmony with the rich decoration which filled their
cathedrals from the floor to the keystone of the vault.
[Illustration: Fig. 88.--Portion of an enamelled archivolt at Khorsabad
(after V. Place).]
Enamelled brick played the same part as painting in fresco, only it was
more solid and was better able to resist the action of damp. In Chaldæa,
where it rains oftener than in Assyria, greater use has been made of
enamelled brick than in the latter country. The Ninevite artists
scarcely ever employed this method of decoration, except round the
principal doorways and to make an elegant border for the archivolt. The
bricks of brilliant colours, which are conspicuous from a distance, are
ornamented with floral designs and rosettes in exquisite taste. In
Sargon’s palace
[Illustration: Fig. 89.--Enamelled brick, Nimroud (after Layard).]
V. Place found nearly all the bricks of the archivolt of a door. Between
two borders of white rosettes is a broad frieze containing winged genii
and symbolical animals bearing the same attributes as the similar
figures in the bas-reliefs (fig. 88). On the lower plinth of the chief
door of the hareem there figured on the enamelled bricks a lion, an
eagle, a bull, and a plough; at the turn of the angle stood the king. At
Nimroud most remarkable enamelled fragments were also discovered
depicting portions of soldiers, weapons and chariots, and even parts of
inscriptions. On a single brick, found by Layard, a king is seen
offering a libation and attended by two warriors (fig. 89). But in
general each figure was made up of a large number of bricks, since the
restricted dimensions of a baked brick did not allow more than a part of
the subject to be placed upon it. The design was executed and the
vitrifiable colours applied before the baking; the artist had to
apportion to each brick the different parts of a figure in such a manner
that when they were put together there might be perfect agreement in the
lines which had to join; the marks to indicate their position, set on
the backs of the tiles, made this operation, which required great
technical skill, much easier. At Babylon, where enamelled brick played a
far greater part in the decoration of buildings than at Nineveh, the
device was adopted, in order to replace coloured sculpture in stone, of
stamping bricks with figures or parts of figures in relief. Imagine a
slab of soft clay several square yards in size; on the surface of this
the whole picture was modelled in relief as it might have been carved on
stone. When this operation was finished, the slab of clay was cut into
rectangular pieces of the size of ordinary bricks. These pieces,
provided with a mark to indicate their position, were then separately
coated with colour and varnish, and afterwards baked. Subsequently they
were joined together with bitumen, which formed a strong mortar, and in
this work of reconstructing the design the workman was guided by the
position-marks. This was the first origin of the mosaics in relief made
by the Greeks and Romans. The Achæmenid palaces of Susa were decorated
by the same methods, and Persian artists imitated the Babylonians in
their execution of the great brick bas-reliefs with which the expedition
conducted by M. Dieulafoy has enriched the Louvre.
Unfortunately only unimportant fragments of bricks modelled in relief
have been, down to the present time, brought to Europe. Travellers pick
up hundreds of fragments of flat enamelled bricks like those at Nineveh
on every mound which covers the ruins of Chaldæa. Those which have been
deposited in our museums represent floral designs, rosettes, genii,
animals, and human figures. Only skilfully directed excavations could
bring to light complete pictures and scenes analogous to those
displayed upon the walls of the Ninevite and Susian palaces. Diodorus,
following Ctesias, relates that at Babylon, on the walls of the palace
built by Nebuchadnezzar, but which he attributes to Semiramis, there
were scenes of every sort painted on brick. “Animals of every kind,” he
says, “were here to be seen, copied according to all the rules of art
with regard both to form and colour. The whole represented the hunting
of various animals, the dimensions of which exceeded four cubits. In the
midst was Semiramis on horseback, hurling a javelin at a panther, and
beside her, her husband Ninus striking with his lance a lion which he is
attacking at close quarters.” Berosus is no doubt speaking of enamelled
bricks in his description of the paintings in the Temple of Bel, in
which were seen “marvellous monsters of every sort presenting the
greatest variety of forms.” Lastly, the prophet Ezekiel, who lived at
Babylon, says, speaking of Jerusalem: “she saw men pourtrayed upon the
wall, the images of the Chaldæans pourtrayed with vermilion, girded with
girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all
of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of
Chaldæa.”
The art of enamelling brick, handed down by the Babylonians to the
Persians of the Achæmenid period, long remained flourishing in the East.
The decoration of the mosques of Broussa, Tabriz, and Ispahan, which
excites the admiration of every traveller, is based on the same
principles as that of the Ninevite, Babylonian, and Susian palaces.
Only, instead of figures of living beings, which the Koran does not
tolerate, the enamelled tiles bear religious inscriptions in ornamental
Cufic characters, and elegant designs of flowers and trees. Every one
has had the opportunity of seeing specimens from the workshops which
were still flourishing in the last century in Asia Minor, and the
productions of which adorn the palaces and the richest mosques
of the Mussulman world. This art is directly derived from the
Chaldæo-Assyrians, and it is interesting to observe that their
successors, down to our own times, have not made the smallest progress
in it.