Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/136

 Seoondakv Forms. 125 structions. Excepting this, we can perceive naught but dis- similarities. Thus, the crowning members of the Greek doorway are always very distinct, well defined, and their profiles frankly salient The most conspicuous shape is a band of dentels, a form conspicuously absent from the Persian crowm'ng ; a number of ill- defined mouldings being crowded in in their stead, whose re-enter- ing contour finds no paiallel in the Greek membering. This imparts to the whole a confused and heavy aspect. As in the entablature^ here also, the architect betrays hesitancy, as if trying to find his way. Matters are diflerently ar- ranged' at Persepolis, where we stand before an art that not only has constituted itself, but whose forms and proportions are its own and fall in their proper place after a weII*pondered scheme. Of the cohimn and its double type of capital and base we have already spoken. The membering seen about the openings, real or blank, gate- ways, windows, and niches tc fwn Imc variArl • thn-i- FiG. 54.— Elevation of doorway from Ihe Gabre. is even less vaned, tne> Di»aiAfOT.Z'^rt«rt^,tom.i.FiB.36. are everywhere crowned by the Egyptian gorge, and the disappearance of the mud walls in which they were pierced makes them look like so many isolated stone structures (Figs. 14, 22). We may reasonably suppose that in the accessory parts of the edifice, in the lateral wings of the domestic residence, a brick wall may have successfully terminated in a cavetto. The builder of that period could find no more difficulty in carving the shape in the brick than his modern successor all over Persia. A good instance will be found in the annexed illustration (Fig. 55) from the minaret of a mosque at Ispahan, exhibiting a curve towards the summit, whose profile at once recalls that of the Egyptian and the Persepolitan cornice. If the actual fact of the borrowing cannot be denied, it should in all fairness be observed that the Persian architect carried Digitized by Google