Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/190

 i6o A History ov Art in Chald.ka and Assyria. and, provided that his appetite is never allowed to go unsatisfied, he may be an inoffensive and almost a docile companion until he is nearly full grown. We are ready to believe that the lion and lioness shown in our Fig. y y were tame ones. The back- ground of the relief suggests a park attached to the royal residence, rather than a marsh, jungle or desert. Vines heavy with fruit and bending flowers rise above the dozing lioness ; we can hardly suppose that wild animals could intrude into such a garden. It follows, then, that the artist could study his models as they moved at freedom among the trees of the royal demesne, basking idly in the sun or stretching themselves when they rose, or burying their gleaming teeth on the living prey thrown to them by their keepers. Thanks to such facilities as these the Ninevite sculptors have handed down to us more faithful reproductions of the lion than their more skilful successors of Greece or Rome. For the latter the lion was little more than a conventional type from which ornamental motives might be drawn. Sometimes no doubt they obtained very fine effects from it, but they always considered themselves free to modify and amplify, according to the requirements of the moment. Thus they were often led to give him full and rounded forms, which had a beauty of their own but were hardly true to nature. The Assyrian never committed that fault. He knew that the great flesh-eating beasts never grew fat, that they were all nerve and muscle, without any of those adipose tissues which reach so great a development in herbivorous animals, like the sheep or ox, or those that eat anything that comes, like the pig. Look at the bronze lion from Khorsabad figured in our Plate XL, and see how lean he is at the croup in spite of the power in his limbs, and how the bones of his shoulder and thigh stand out beneath the skin. This characteristic is less strongly marked in the bas-reliefs, which hardly enjoy the same facilities for emphasising structure as work in the round. On the other hand the other features of the leonine physiognomy are rendered with singular energy. Anything finer in its way than the head of the colossal lion from Nimroud figured in our Plate VIII. can hardly be imagined. Seeing how familiar they were with this animal, the artists of Mesopotamia could hardly have failed to employ him as a motive in ornament. In such a case, of course, they did not.insist so