Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/151

 I40 History of Art in Antiquity. (Plate XL), where they are juxtaposed to a pair of light leaflets, and allied to each other by a flexible stalk which is carried across the panel into consecutive semi-circles. Nor should minor shapes be left unnoticed, such as the lance>heads that appear in the middle of the gradine, and the tooth-moulding enframing the royal guards in Fig. 68 and the walking animals in Plate XI. We can hardly regard in the light of ornament the pyramidal trees, that con- stantly occur in the front wall of the substructures at Persepolis to fill the surface (Fig. 69). This same tree crops up again in the long scplptiired bands that else- where occupy verysimilar situa- tions to these, where it serves to separate the j^roups from each other, and "fills the part of a kind of punctuation."' I am inclined to think that the pyramidal shape fin;urcd was meant for a cypress, a tree very common in Ears. Its contour is one peculiarly fitted to conventional treatment. Its natural features, though conventionalized, arc well l)roug;ht out in the art of Assyria in Persia its rendering is somewhat different, and still further removed from nature, its aspect being that of a fine cone carved all over with branches and fruit.* ' /lis/, of Art, torn. ii. Fig. 151. • M. Franchet has sent mc the following conjertural remarks : — " With regard to the second service, to which you have drawn my attention, it certainly looks like a pine cone {JPinu* Utnx)^ which the artist has elongated into a tree ; and to Flo. 67. — Sum. Enamellctl ornament. Louvre. Drawn by St Elme Gautkr. Digitized by Google
 * Flandim and Costs, Peru aiuienne. Plates CIII.^VI.