Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/170

 14.2 A History of Art in Ciiald.ka and Assyria. until the fall of Nineveh and Babylon, the painters and sculptors of Mesopotamia, from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the foot of the mountains of Armenia, did not cease to reproduce and perpetuate it, I might say to satiety ; they reproduced it with infinite patience, and, so far as we can see, without once suspecting that the human visage might sometimes vary its lines and present another aspect. § 4. On the Representations of Animals. In the preceding pages our chief aim has been to determine the nature and the mode of action of the influences under which the Assyro-Chaldaean sculptor had to do his work. We have explained how certain conditions hampered his progress and in some respects arrested the development of his skill. The height to which the plastic genius of this people might have carried their art had their social habits been more favourable to the study of the nude, may perhaps be better judged from their treatment of animals than anything else. Some of these, both in relief and in the round, are far superior to their human figures, and even now excite the admiration of sculptors. The cause of this difference is easily seen. When an artist had to represent an animal, his study of its form was not em- barrassed by any such obstacle as a long and heavy robe. The animal could be watched in its naked simplicity and all its in- stinctive and characteristic movements grasped. The sculptor could follow each contour of his model ; he could take account of the way in which the limbs were attached to the trunk ; he saw the muscles swell beneath the skin, he saw them tighten with exertion and relax when at rest. He was not indifferent to such a sight ; on the contrary, he eagerly drank in the instruc- tion it afforded, and of all the works he produced those in which such knowledge is put into action are by far the most perfect ; they show us better than anything else how great were his native gifts, and what a fund of sympathy with the beauties of life and with its inexhaustible variety his nature contained. Whether he model an animal separately or introduce it into some historic scene, it is always well rendered both in form and movement.