Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/279

 POLYCHROMY. 247 the painter merely to give a few strokes of the brush which, by the frankness and vivacity of their accent, should bring the frieze into harmony with the wall that enframed it. Nothing more was required to destroy the dull monotony of the long band of stone. At the same time these touches of colour helped to draw attention to certain details upon which the sculptor wished to insist. For all this, four colours were enough. Observers agree in saying that black, white, red and blue made up the whole palette. 1 These tints were everywhere employed pretty much in the same fashion. 2 In those figures in which drapery covered all but the head, the latter was, of course, more important than ever. The artist therefore set himself to work to increase its effect as much as he could. He painted the eyeball white, the pupil and iris, the eye- brows, the hair and the beard, black ; sometimes the edges of the eyelids were defined with the same colour. The band about the head of the king or vizier is often coloured red, as well as the rosettes which in other figures sometimes decorate the royal tiara. The same tint is used upon fringes, baldricks, sandals, earrings, parasols and fly-flappers, sceptres, the harness of horses and the ornamental studs or bosses with which it was covered, and the points of weapons. 3 In some instances blue is substituted for red in these details. Place speaks of a fragment lost in the Tigris on which the colours were v more brilliant than usual ; upon it the king held a fan of peacock's feathers coloured with the brightest mineral blue. 4 When figures held a flower in their hands it was blue, and at Khorsabad a bird on the wing was covered with the same tint. 5 In some bas-reliefs red and blue alternate in the sandals of the figures and harness of the horses. 6 We find a red bow with a 1 Botta (Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 178. Layard, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 310. 2 Upon this question of polychromy in the reliefs, a very precise note of Layard's may be consulted with profit (Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 312). The discussion has also been very judiciously summed up by Rawlinson (The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. PP- 357-365). One of the plates from which we may gather the best idea of how this sculpture must have looked when its colouring was intact, is that in which Layard gives a reproduction of one of the winged bulls as it appeared when first uncovered (Monuments, first series, plate 92). 3 Botta, Monument de Ninive, plates 12 and 14. 4 Place, Ninive, vol. i. p. 58. 5 Botta, Monument de Ninive, plate 113. 6 Ibid, plates 43 and 53.