Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/136

1 1 8 A History of Art in Ciiai.d.fa and Assyria. left by the hammer should be completed and defined with the burin and chisel. The most important discovery of the kind was made as recently as 1878, by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, who found the bronze gates to which we have already more than once alluded, in the mound of Balawat. 1 Shalmaneser II., who built the palace to which these gates belonged, caused his victorious cam- paigns and his sacrifices to the gods to be represented upon them. We have already reproduced many of these curious reliefs (Vol. I., Figs. 51, 68, 73, 158 ; and above, Fig. 28) ; a last example will help to show the facility of the Assyrian artist and the boldness of his rendering of animals and men (Fig. 54). He played with Fig. 54. — Man driving goats and sheep. From the Balawat gates. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Flme Gautier. bronze as he did with alabaster ; in both his handling was firm and rapid and his modelling at once broad and strongly felt. 2 This peculiar handling, at once free and a little hard, is to be found in all the works of these people. It may be recognized in a wooden lion, unfortunately much mutilated, which belongs to the Louvre (Fig. 55), and in those carvings upon the shells of pearl oysters that have been found in such numbers, especially in Lower Chaldsea. 3 The ivories alone are, some- times at least, without this peculiar character. They display 1 See vol. i. page 242. 2 See also plate xii. 3 Layard, Discoveries, p. 563.