Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/465

 Style and Execution. 441 advanced to enable them to apply their processes to any subject diat might be presented to them. In the same masterly fasliion with which they had formerly executed those hunting scenes on enamelled bricks, said by Ctesias to have adorned the walls of the palaces at Babylon/ so at Susa, when they were ordered to embellish the house of the new masters of the East, their brush and boasting- tool reproduced on clay the type of the royal archers, which at Persepolis was sculptured on stone. But whilst they made new moulds they continued to use those they already possessed. Hence it is that the walking lions on the friezes at Susa are constructed on precisely the same lines as the exemplars of Assyria and Chaldsea, save that they show decided progress on the latter, for not only is the management of colour to heighten the relief better understood, but the modelling is bolder. Proportion and pose, however, are identical ; both strove after a realistic interpreta- tion of nature.' To the same artisans must be attributed the animal figures on unglazed clay that seem to have formed part of the inner decoration of one of the gates to the citadel.' The elegance and vigour of the modelling are truly wonderful, and recall the fabrication of the lions on the enamelled frieze. Their archetypes will some day or other be discovered at Babylon. Unfortunately the fragments hitherto collected in that city are mere crumbs, and therefore do not lend themselves to the recon- the Pdresc collection, a Chaltbean enamdled brick in a better state of preservation than any we possess. What has become of it ? Here is the description its former owner gives of it : "I should dare to advance another conjecture " (in regard to thyrsi) " had I time to examine a fragment in my collection, which originally came from Persia, and was picked up at Bagdad seven or eight years aga It is the oldest, and possibly the most remarkable piece in my possession ; though it is no more than a remnant of an ancient brick covered with incrustation, very similar to that of the Chinese, but enamelled and coloured a bluish green like the idols of the Egyptian mummies." (The brick in question may be of the class Pliny calls UUertuiit used by the Bal^onians for noting down their astronomical observations.) (juasi-Egyptian mode, yet slightly different. The figures carry long sticks not unlike (hyrsi, terminating in a radiating tuft, which may very well be Babylonian papyrus. Bacchus must have called at Babylon on his way to India, whence he may have brought it along with other trophies " {LtUm ie Pdrtse aux //ires Du/uy, paUished by Ph. Tamizey de Larroque, in the collection of Un^Hsksd DocumetOt rdaHng French History^ 1888, torn. i. p. 641. Diyiiized by Google
 * HisL tfArtf torn. ii. p. 298. In the seventeenth century there was in FVance, in
 * ' It exhitnts hieroglyphic characters, and tinted figures barely outlined, dressed in a
 * Hist, of Art, tom. ii. Plate XV.
 * DiEULAFOV, Deuxikme Rapport^ pp. 21, 41.