Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/156

 134 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. in reality no more than a pure affectation, one of those conventions by which art sometimes thinks it can add to the beauty of the human form. It seems to me to be part of the great original effort of the young art of Greece to give animation to the face. The artist drew up the corners of the mouth in an exaggerated smile, and then, observing that he had broken in upon the equili- brium of the features, and, obeying an impulse towards parallelism, he turned up the eyes in the same fashion, and made them grin with the mouth. Oriental etiquette required an impassive coun- tenance for gods and kings, but in the freedom of the Greek cities FIG. 87. Head of a limestone statue. Height 4! inches. Piot Collection. the chiefs of the people and even the gods wished to seem amiable and to be popular. Such is the explanation of this pretended Asiatic fashion, which was, moreover, so far from being constant that at a more advanced period of archaism we find the outer angle often dropped instead of raised ; this new affectation is easily perceptible in not a few Cypriot terra-cottas. the round belonging to the same period. It is both rarer and less pronounced in reliefs of the ninth century. Among the very ancient heads recently discovered in Chaldsea, I only find it in one small head, which is less ancient than the others." M. Heuzey here alludes to the fragment reproduced in our History of Art in Chaldfea and Assyria, Vol. II. Fig. 103.