Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/128

 i io A History of Art in Ciiaum-a and Assyria. facilities had a double consequence : they led the Ninevite artist to make lavish use of sculpture in the decoration of buildings, and they had no little influence upon their habits of design and upon the executive processes they adopted. The most peculiar, the truly characteristic feature of their bas-reliefs so far as execution is concerned, is the combination of incisiveness and looseness in their handling. We feel that the chisel, in spite of the haste with which it worked, has been strongly driven. It is not so in the case of other countries ; as a rule where work is rapid it is also slight and superficial. This apparent anomaly is to be explained by the qualities of the material. The alabaster used at Khorsabad and Kouyundjik is so soft that we can scratch it with the finger-nail, and even the limestone preferred by the artists of Assurbanipal is not much harder. 1 How this tempts the hand ! Whether one tries to or not one writes boldly with a goose quill, and here the docility of the material becomes a danger. The carver's tool, when it meets with no real resistance, runs away with the hand, and the sculptor is insensibly led on to over-accent his intentions, and to exaggerate his effects. Sometimes the A ssyr ians attacked the harder stones, which they obtained from certain districts of Kurdistan and the neigh- bourhood of the extinct volcanoes of the Sinjar, between the valleys of the Tigris and the Khabour ; 2 we shall be content with quoting as examples a basalt statue found at Kaleh-Shergat and the obelisk of Shalmaneser II., in the British Museum, which is cut from the same material (Vol. I. Fig. iii, and below, Fig. 49)/' It deals with the homage done and the tribute offered to the king by five conquered nations. Among the offerings are several strange animals. 4 The small building at Khorsabad which has 1 At Nimroud, in the palace of Esarhaddon, the lions and bulls of the gateways are of a grey and rather coarse limestone, while the bas-reliefs are of alabaster (Layard, NinevehyVOl. ii. pp. 26 and 163). The same mixture occurs in the palace of Assurnazirpal Several of the bulls in that building are of a fine yellow limestone which must have been brought from the hills of Kurdistan (Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii- P- 315)' 2 Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 316; Discoveries, pp. 307, 308, 309, &c. 3 Each side of the original has five reliefs. We have been compelled to suppress one in order to give our figures sufficient scale. 4 The obelisk reliefs should be studied in horizontal bands, and not by taking the whole of a face at a time. A translation of the accompanying texts will be found in Oppert's Expédition, vol. i ; and reproductions of all the four faces in Layard's Monuments, 1st series, plates 53 56.