Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/408

 370 HISTORY OF ART IN PHCENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. first 'lessons were taken. 1 It would be too much to say that his drawing has true originality, but it is easily distinguished from that of a Memphite or Saite, of a Babylonian or Ninevite artist. It has more body and decision than the Egyptian style of the de- cadence, the only one by which it can have been inspired. The Phoenician artist drew some benefit from the example of every predecessor and neighbour ; in his latest things he may even have drawn lessons from the early art of Greece. Some of his works show an ease and correctness of design which gives this conjecture no slight probability. However this may be, it is certain that, in spite of a certain commonplaceness, the style of these Phoenician artists is an advance upon the same thing in Egypt. Is it enough to account for this difference to suppose that Assyria taught them what they did not learn from Egypt, or must we admit that Greece, too, counted for something in the progress made ? Before this question can be answered we must wait, perhaps, until more remains are discovered. But in any case the childish conventions and naive distortions of the human body which occur in Egyptian art even as late as the. New Empire, are not to be found here. Limbs are more skilfully attached ; the draughtsman has a better idea of the changes their contours present with this or that movement of the trunk ; the eye is no longer drawn in front in a head seen in profile. If attitudes are simple and as a rule but little varied, they are at least easy and natural. Horsemen for instance sit well down in their saddles. As for horses themselves, they are well rendered, they have more breadth and truth than on the Theban pylons. The lion, too, received fuller and more accented forms from the Phoenician workman than from the Egyptian sculptor ; he is, in fact, a descendant from the admirable lions of Assyria. These observations have been mainly suggested by the bowls or plates reproduced in this chapter, but they apply to almost as great an extent to vessels of larger dimensions, like the craters of Prseneste and Csre. Such monuments as these are much less numerous, but even among them degrees of excellence and dif- ferences of execution can be distinguished. On a patera from 1 One of these exceptions occurs in the second cup from Praeneste (Fig. 267). The goddess who carries off the hunter and his chariot is shown full face. So too are the two divinities introduced on the cup in the Varvakeion Museum (Fig. 274).