Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/428

 390 A History of Art in Ciiald.ea and Assyria. number of classes ; but our readers cannot have forgotten the graceful girlish forms carved on the handles of the perfume spoons, here stepping delicately among the stems of papyrus, there with their slender limbs extended like those of a swimmer. 1 We may be allowed, perhaps, to refresh the memories of readers who have dwelt so long with us in Assyria, by placing before them two more examples from the marvellous art wealth of the Nile valley (Figs. 260 and 261). These two examples do not belong to the same class as the perfume spoons, but their ruling idea is the same. They are. mirrors with bronze handles. In both cases these handles are modelled in the shape of nude women or young girls, the slender proportions recalling the sculptures and paintings of the New Empire. In the first the right arm hangs by the side while the left is crossed upon the chest ; the head alone, protected by the thick hair or wig, supports the mirror (Fig. 260). In the second both arms are raised as high as the shoulders and the hands bent upwards from the wrists to meet a depressed cross-piece to which the polished disk is attached (Fig. 261). In both cases the modelling of limbs and torso is a little dry and summary ; but the motive is well imagined, and in spite of defects in detail the whole is characterized by style and grace. Nothing of the kind has been found, or, to all appearance, will ever be found, in the goldsmith's work of Babylon and Nineveh. As new excavations are made, we shall, no doubt, find new arrangements, but it is very unlikely that anything yet to be discovered can essentially modify the idea we have been led to form of the tastes and habits of Mesopotamian industry. We are sufficiently familiar with Chaldaeo-Assyrian sculpture, both in its strength and its weakness, to thoroughly understand the gaps which must always have existed in the storehouse to which the artizan went for his ideas. The artizan followed the example of the sculptor ; he gave his attention to the bas-relief and it repaid his trouble. Among the figures sprinkled with so lavish a hand over stone and wood, ivory and metal, some were traced with the point or engraved in intaglio ; others were beaten up with the hammer or chisel so as to stand in gentle salience above their bed. But, speaking generally, no attempt was made to model the nude figures of men or women 1 Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. figs. 257, 330 and 331.