Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/251

 Assyrian Sculpture. 219 sculptor begins to notice their distinguishing features and to give their proper physiognomy to the different countries overrun by the Assyrians. But these landscape backgrounds are not to be found in all the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad. 1 The art of Sargon was an art of transition. While on the one hand it endeavoured to open up new ground, on the other it travelled on the old ways and followed many of the ancient errors ; it had a marked predilection for figures larger than nature, and bas-reliefs treating of royal pageants and processions remind us by the simplicity of their conception of those of Assurnazirpal. We have already given many fragments (Vol I. Figs. 22 — 24, and 29), and now we give another, a vizier and a eunuch standing before the king in the characteristic attitude of respect (Fig. 118). The inscription which cut the figures of Assurnazirpal so awk- wardly in two has disappeared ; the proportions have gained in slenderness, and the muscular development, though still strongly marked, has lost some of its exaggeration. All this shows pro- gress, and yet on the whole the Louvre relief is less happy in its effect than the best of the Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum. The execution is neither so firm nor so frank ; the relief is much higher and the modelling a little heavy and bulbous in consequence. This result may also be caused to some extent by the nature of the material, which is a softer alabaster than was employed, so far as we know, in any other part of Assyria. At Nimroud a fine limestone was chiefly used. We shall be contented with mentioning the stele of Sargon, found near Larnaca, in Cyprus, in 1845. It is most important as an historical monument ; it proves that, as a sequel to his Syrian conquests, the terror of Sargon's name was so widespread that even the inhabitants of the islands thought it prudent to delare 1 Among the reliefs in which the transport of the materials for Sargon's palace is represented, there is one which shows timber being dragged down to the Phoenician coast. Here the sea is no longer indicated merely by sinuous lines and a few fishes as in most of the earlier reliefs ; there are all kinds of animals, shells, turtles, crabs, frogs, and even sea-serpents (Botta, Monument de JVmive, plate 34). In one place we find a wooded hill, with trees still of indeterminate form (plate 78). In another we may recognize pines in the forest traversed by the Assyrian cavalry (plates 108-113) ; birds fly among the branches and several among them fall pierced with the arrows of the hunters. Other trees bear fruit (plate 114). Partridges run upon the slopes of the hill. See also in the basalt reliefs from the building we have called a temple, a coniferous tree of some kind, probably a cypress, the general form of which is very well rendered (Place, AHnive, plate 48).