Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/466

 442 History of Art in Antiquitv. stitution of a unit. Yet among these tiny relics is a fragmentary lion whose mode of enamelling exhibits the qualities of tone, the resplendency, and the solidity which we find at Susa.* As already observed, the high excellence of Chaldaean enamel is sadly to seek at Nineveh. Had the lions that make so brave a figure in the Louvre been exhumed a little sooner, they might have served to Rll one of the most serious lacunae in the history we are writing, and we should not have hesitated to assign them to the original and powerful art of Chaldaea, whose labours are now solely represented by figurines of bronze and terra-cotta, including a rich treasure of engraved stones, all the rest having almost entirely disappeared. When we compare the monuments of this kind that have been preserved, whether of Egyptian, Phoenician, Mesopotamian, or Susian origin, we perceive that in no instance did the ancient enamel-painter aim with his few pigments at reproducing realistic colouring in his presentment of inanimate and living forms. With a just appredatton of the narrow limits within which his art moved, he used colour either to gladden die eye with its harmonies and contrasts, or to emphasize the outline and modelling by a few bold, vivid touches. As at Khorsabad, here also the colouring is highly conventional The shoulder-blade of the lions is marked by a blue patch ; the mane, the masses of hair under the body, about the legs, and the hind parts, are of the same hue, laid on with a broad touch of the brush. The tone is not uniform, and varies from one figure to another. Yet, in face of similar figures, nobody ivill ever imagine that the wild beasts which haunt the banks of the Choaspes, fringed with tamarisks and rushes, had blue skins.' The tint in this instance is no more than a value put in to strengthen the lines and heighten the salience of the muscles and joints. Thus the hands and lower extremities of the archers, now in the Louvre, to which reference has repeatedly been made, are painted dark brown ; and Dieulafoy found tiles which appear to have belonged to very similar figures, where the same parts had a coat of white glaze laid on.* We are quite willing to admit that two rows of figures of different hue extended here right and left of the ^ Hist, of Artf torn. ii. pp. 299, 300. the second room at the Louvre. Digitized by Go
 * From KliomlMd came a Une-wmged bull {l&id.^ Plate XIV.).
 * The feagmaits in question and a bit of the head are deposited in a cabinet of