Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/280

 24S A History of Art in Chaldaea and Assyria. blue quiver. 1 The flames of towns taken and set on fire by the Assyrians were coloured red in many of the Khorsabad reliefs. 2 A few traces of colour may still be discovered upon some of Sargon's sculptures in the Louvre and upon those of Assurnazirpal in the British Museum. 3 I could find no remains of colour either upon the reliefs of Assurbanipal or upon those of Sennacherib, where, moreover, Layard tells us he could discover none. 4 It would be very strange however, if in these palaces of the last of the Sargonids the decorator had deliberately renounced the beauties of that discreet system of polychromy of which the traces are to be found in all the earlier palaces. It is possible that these touches of colour were reserved for the last when the palaces were erected, and that something may have happened to prevent them from being placed on the sculptures of these two sovereigns. So far as we can discover, no trace of colour has been found on any of the arched steles or isolated statues left to us by Chaldaea and Assyria. This abstention is to be explained by the nature of the materials at the disposal of the sculptor in Chaldaea, the cradle of his art. These were chiefly igneous rocks, very hard, very close in grain and dark in colour, and susceptible of a very high polish. The existence of such a polish disposes of any idea that the figures to which it was given were ever painted. The pig- ment would not have stayed long on such a surface, and besides, the reds and blues known to the Ninevite artists would have had a very poor effect on a blue-black ground. On the other hand, when they set to work to model in clay the Assyrians could give free rein to their love for colour. Most of the statuettes found in the ruins of their palaces had been covered with a single uniform tint, which, thanks to the porous nature of the material, is still in fair preservation. The tint varies between one figure and another, and, as they are mostly figures of gods or demons, the idea has been suggested that their colours are em- blematic. 5 Thus the Louvre possesses a statuette from Khorsabad 1 Botta, Monument, &c. plate 62. 2 Ibid, plates 61 and 76, and vol. v. p. 124. 3 See especially at the south end of the Nimroud Gallery, the upper part of a male figure, numbered 17 a. The black of the hair and beard has preserved much of its strength. 4 u At Kouyunjik there were no traces whatever of colour.'* Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 310. 6 Heuzey, Catalogue des Figurines en terre Cuite du Musée du Louvre, p. 18.