Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/332

 304 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. Phoenicia, the motive is better made out ; the bulls, lions, or sphinxes are naturally posed and always have a certain vitality and correctness of form. On the other hand, it would be difficult to conceive anything more heavy and ungainly than these nondescript beasts, who seem about to crush the complex symbol which stands between them. The Cypriot artisan has completely failed to understand the conditions upon which success in such a matter depends : he has ruined his borrowed theme by the ill-advised changes introduced into it. We may say as much of another type borrowed from Egypt and Assyria, namely, that of a human-headed bird. 1 We have found it repeated in the lapidary sculpture of Cyprus (Fig. 134), and here it crops up on a vase (Fig 243). But it is thoroughly FlG. 243. Winged and human-headed quadruped. 2 transfigured : the human head .is still there and the bird's body and wings, but the motive is complicated by the ad- dition of four short legs, like those of a pig. The ensemble thus composed is singularly ungraceful. The corresponding creature of Egypt was by no means unpleasing, while it answered to an idea which could be readily understood. By it the Egyptian artist attempted to mark that the soul when freed from the body became something lighter and more mobile than the lightest, most mobile, of living things ; he gave his bird a human face in order 1 Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. I. Fig. 38 ; Art in Chaldcea and Assyria, Vol. II. Figs. 91 and 207. 2 From a vase in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.