Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/217

 Chald.ean Sculpture. 187 found either in Egyptian sculpture or in the later works of Assyria. It bears witness to a sculpturesque instinct that does not reappear until we arrive at the art of the Greeks and the magnificent development of draperies and their significance which we then encounter." 1 The figures we have been describing seem to us to represent The Archaic age of Chalu^ean art. The characteristics to which the name of archaism has been given are easier to feel than to define. The proportions, especially in the seated figures, are here very short and broad, so much so that they Fig. 99.— Female statuette. Alabaster. Height about 8 inches. seem to want length even when compared to the thickset forms in the Nimroud bas-reliefs. There is some evidence that the neck was very short and thick and the head large for the body, as we see it indeed in the statuette of a woman sitting, in which our lamented colleague de Longpérier was the first to recognize the work of some ancient Chaldaean artist (Fig. 99). 2 In the figures from Tello the elbow and the lower edge of the robe make those sharp angles which Assyrian sculptors set themselves to round off in later days. There is no attempt at 1 Heuzey, Les Fouilles de Chaldée, pp. 13, 14. 2 De Longpérier, Musée Napoleon III., plate 2.