Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/405

 SCULPTURE. 389 beyond the flesh with the somewhat hard firmness which is in the habits of the Assyrian sculptor, neither do we find the dryness of execution and conventionalism which we had occasion to observe in Phrygia. 1 Here, on the contrary, nothing could be more faithful than the rendering of the rich masses of floating hair falling low over his forehead. Travellers tell us that the lion still has his lair in the Lycian Taurus ; so that the artist could go to nature for his portrait. Of the two monuments we have studied, that of Trysa may, perhaps, travel back to the seventh century B.C. ; as for the other, it evinces a far more skilful chisel, and would therefore date from the sixth. 2 However that may be, the pair have all the appearance of being the outcome of an art as yet uninfluenced by that of Ionia, in that their themes belong to the properties of Asiatic culture. Phrygia, too, set up lions as guardians of the tomb (Figs. 64, 65) ; and the hero near the doorway (Fig. 280), who has just slain the king of the forest, brings to mind the group of two warriors running their spears into the Gorgon's head (Fig. 117). The situation they occupy about the entrance to one of the most important tombs of the Sangarius necropolis is akin to that of the Lycian figure. The difference is one of style. Ample and natural- istic in Lycia, it is dry and frigid in Phrygia. The inhabitants of the former country would seem to have had quite a natural talent for plastic arts a fact that inclines one to believe that they did not give up practising them, even when they sought examples and teaching among their neighbours of the Mseander and the Hermus valleys. Consequently, in the vast array of bas-reliefs ornamenting the tombs of the Lycians, a goodly number were doubtless executed by native artists, trained at the school of Ionian masters. But whilst to a certain extent they modified their style, in other respects they remained faithful to old local traditions. Hence it is that they continued to multiply figures of lions, and went to the repertory of Oriental arts for their forms. Such would be the con- flict between the lion and the bull ; the group where the stag is slain by the king of the beasts ; lions and sphinxes set up in pairs face to face. 3 Very similar subjects were largely reproduced on 1 Hist, of Art, torn. v. pp. 178, 179. 2 M. Benndorf inclines to think that the sculptures in question are anterior to the Persian conquest (Reisen, torn. i. p. 88). 8 FELLOWS, An Account of Discoveries in Lyria, 1841, plates opposite pp. 174, 187, 197 ; TEXIER, Description, torn. iii. Plate CCXXV. ; PRACHOW, Antiquissima monumenta Xanthiaca, Plates IV.-VI.