Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/121

 io8 History op Art in ANTiQunr. top a circular frame or disc, within which are emblems intended to frighten the enemy and make manifest the power of the tutelary god of the monarch. Below the disc, subordinate ornaments make up a kind of capital about the pole ; the principal member — that which attracts the attention most — is very salient, and composed of two lions' heads, back to back, with a horn sticking out in the middle of the forehead. The type is highly conventional, and very similar to the Persepolitan specimen (Fig. 31) already noticed. All that is required to make the likeness complete, and obtain the oblong form of the Persian capital, which was demanded by the peculiar nature of the loft it had to support, would be to add neck and rump to the heads. If, as we are inclined to believe, it is not unlikely that the builders who erected the palaces of the Achscmcnid kings found in the Assyrian forms of Fig. 41, the first rudiments of their favourite theme, what is proper to them is this : in the crowninq^ member of the column they never introduced the lion, whose image they beheld everywhere about the models from which they drew their inspiration. They replaced it by a bull. If the latter obtained the preference, it was because liis elongated head, notably the horns, furnished a mass the profiles of which coincided better with the general character of the capital. The frank salience of the horns continued and lightened it, whilst their light colour was in pleasing contrast with the surrounding masses, and served to heighten the effect. The fracrments that have come from Susa, and are now in the Louvre (Fig. 42), seem to prove that accessories, such as ears and horns, were bronze, and applied after the work was finished. At any rate, none have been found in the rubbish. That which tends to confirm the conjecture of the substitution of a bull for a lion, is the fact that the head of the ferine was preserved in one of the Persepolitan arrangements, albeit with the addition of a horn. If the architect borrowed a conventional type from the repertory of Chaldaeo- Assyrian art, it was because he found in the salience and curve of the horn exactly what he wanted for a satisfactory ending to his capital. It helped to bring it out and lighten it as welL In Egypt, too, forms are encountered which bear a certain analogy with those we have just reviewed. Thus, among the favourite themes the artist loved to introduce in tomb-paintings. Digitized by Google