Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/195

ASSYRIAN ART. sculptures, eiiaiiR'lcd bricks, frescoes, oolored stucco, marljlc |)iiements, and han^'ings made a gorgeous display.

Scui.i'TUKE. When Layard, Botta, and Place made the first excavations in Assyria, it was the scul])liir('s that excited tlu^ greatest ainazeiiieiit tliriiuglioiit the world. The colossal bulls and lions guarding the portals and the miles of scenes in low relief were unlike anything yet known in the history of art, and their interest was not merely artistic, since they furnished the most graphic information as to the life, cos- tume, and history of the people. There are still gaps. A solitary female statue of the Fourteenth Century B.C. seems to hint that ISabylonian models were then supreme, for its counterpart is foimd in earlier Babylonian terracottas and gems. But later works show that statuary was seldom produced, as the Assyrian artist never mastered its technique; the few remaining statues of kings — such as .Vsurnazirpal, Sennacherib, and Asiubanipal, or of divinities, like Nebo — when compared with the mass of relief-work, show that the heart of the Assyrian .scul])tiu- was not in this branch of his art. lie did not know liow to model the figure under the dra|)ery, nor had he learned to treat drapery in folds, but only as a smooth sheath. The colossal man-lieadcd Inills and lions are in reality not works in the round, but in relief, standing out from a central block. Where the Assyrian sculptor showed his power was in the observation of Nature eye to eye, and his aliility to reproduce his impressions with realism without dcscciuling to triviality. In the royal hunting-scenes this is particularly striking. The lion standing regally in the royal park gazing down at the reclining lioness; the lioness shot Ihrotigh the spine and dragging along her para- lyzed liind-quarters; the mortally wounded lion gnawing his paws; the scene of the wild-ass hunt, with the various stages of watchfulness, panic, and llight, wounding and tearing down by hounds; the hunting hounds themselves led in the leash — these and many more variations on similar themes are studies from life such as no other art has given us. Only the needlessly fas- tidious will carp at the amusingly primitive com- position of some of these scenes, due to the entire absence of ,a knowledge of pers]iective. Each lignre in itself is perfect; and when the artist confines himself to a sini])le frieze-like proces- sion, as in the scenes of the return from the hunt with the dead animals, or the king in his chariot starting the game, his composition does not suffer even from this imperfection.

Up to the present no discoveries of relief sculptures have been made earlier than the time of Asurnazirpal in the early Ninth Century; but the art of his time, so powerful and com- plete, shows that jirobably even under the great Tiglathpileser in the Twelfth Century Assyrian sculpture must have freed itself from its Baby- lonian swaddling-clothes. When this was hap- pening, Babylonian sculpture, after a development of some 3000 years, had fallen into absolute de- cay, and such works as those of Mcredach-idinachi, lifeless and fussy, would have been incajiable of inspiring a new art. In fact, the Assyrian sculp- tor found quite a new manner. Instead of the soft contours and delicate gradations of early Babylonian art, the Assyrian technique was sharp and clear-cut, the outlines distinct, the details given with accuracy. In the figures, the muscles, features, and hair; in the drapery, the patterns; and in the armor, harness, chariots, and other accessories, all the details are given with crisp touch. Doubtless the scjftness of the lime- stone that served as material helped the .sculjitor to reali.'.e his ideal, and to produce the imniense quantity of eontem|)iirary annals in stone that amazes us. The realism was assistetl by the use of color in figures, drajjery, and accessories. The Assyrians in this polychromy of sculpture, as well as in the successful use of the frieze in low re- lief, were the worthy jirediu'cssors of (Ireek aft. The sculptures themselves can be studied in Euro- pean museums; there remain on As.syrian sites only the yet undi.scovered work.s — probably nu- merous. Reliefs from Asurnazirpal's palace may be seen not only at the British Museum, whither the great bulk of them were taken, but also at the Gregorian Museum in the Vatican, at the Historical Society in New York. etc. They illustrate the simple, epic stage of Assyrian sculpture, and are mostly colossiil figures ar- ranged in a single row on' the marble dado that decorated the rooms and corridors of the palaces. The iigures are heavier and more strongly marked than later, and there are few or no accessories. Wliat the cotirse of development was during the next one hundred and fifty years we can only sur- mise, for the next large group of stone reliefs is that of the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, now in the Louvre, which shows the last stage of this epic style; it is still colossal and simple, but while the guardian lion of Asurnazirpal snarls and strikes terror, the man-headed bulls of Sar- gon are genteel colossi of colorless mien. The processions, also, have lost the early fire. The time was ripe for a change of style, which ap- peared under Sargon's successor, Sennacheril), whose reliefs show the advent of a novel pic- turesqueness. Figures are nudtiplied on a back- ground often full of accessories, of landscape, and of buildings; in place of the majestic frieze of large personages, small figures are scattered every- where. It is true that more respect is shora to art by not allowing the rescriptive in.scriptions which accompanied the reliefs to be run straight across the figures, as hitherto; but the defects consequent on ignorance of perspeeti'e are made far more conspicuous. This introduction of the pictorial element, in order to infuse new life into the art, seems to have been successful: for the art of the succce<ling generation — that of Asur- lianipal, whose sculptures form the most fascinat- ing group in the British Museum — shows the good qualities of both the old and the new- schools. There is a riot of many figures in the battle-scenes of the Elamite War; there is the quiet simplicity of the antique frieze in many hunting and banquet scenes. If w-e miss the greater force of the time of Asurnazirpal. there is an added delicacy.

The subjects of the reliefs fall into several categories. ( 1 ) Religious and mythological scenes were rare and belonged mostly to the temjiles, which have not yet been as fully explored as the palaces; there were statues of the gods and heroes, and reliefs of the conflict of Merodaeh with the dragon, the labors of Gilgamesh, and the wars of (he evil spirits. (2) Scenes of con- temporary history were particularly numerous. There were court sculptors who were as much the king's historiographers as were the writers. Every incident in a long war was portrayed in a