Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/232

 2i6 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. a certain latitude as to the posturing and elements of his group, subject to one condition, that it shall be without prejudice to its general character. The lion device stands out amongst all others as that most dear and familiar to the Assyrian ornamentist. 1 It is the one he lavished wherever he found a space, both as decoration of his palaces, furniture, textiles, and jewellery. Caravans carried the latter to the nations of the West, so that the device became fashionable throughout Asia Minor. From Cap- padocia it passed to Phrygia ; thence, step by step, it reached Greece, where it obtained civic rights. Of the animals thus brought in relation and opposed to one another in this theme, some, the sheep, the ox, and the horse, were indigenous, and could be copied from life. Pure creations of the fancy, however, were certainly borrowed from their inventors. Such would be the winged sphinx which occupies the middle of the frontal in the facade of a chapel (Fig. 109) ; such the griffin (Fig. 108) in the flank of this same rocky mass. The wings of the sphinx are designed like those of Assyria, and more particularly Phoenicia ; their tips are curled in front towards the head of the animal. 2 As to the lion, he would seem to be a borrowed type. To judge from certain details, notably the treatment of the mouth, it is clear that the sculptor had never beheld the animal, or, at least, had never looked him narrowly in the face with the intention of making his portrait. Silhouette and general outline were taken from Cappadocian artists ; these in their turn had been inspired from the models furnished by Assyria. Assyria, with her vast jungles swarming with ferine, her royal hunts at which they were brought down by dozens, alone lived, if we may so speak, in intimacy with the lion, and could thus hit off his physiognomy. The type she had created was offered to the gaze of the Syrians in countless structures that rose in the broad strip of land separating the Euphrates from the Orontes valley and the oasis of Damascus, a kind of border line, the object of frequent and long disputes between Syrians and the kings of Calach and Nineveh. Nor was its circulation confined within these land- marks ; seals, carpets, small pieces of furniture of every description, 1 Hist, of Art, torn. ii. Figs. 95, 124, 138, 139, 265, 280, 331, 348, 399, 409, 430. 443- 2 Ibid., Fig. 249; torn. iii. Figs. 73, 76, 547, 552, 593.