Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/155

Conventions of Ciiald^o-Assyrian Sculpture. 131 have been awkward. But if we look at them f rom the side they appear to be walking, in which attitude alone would all the four legs be visible and clear of each other. In most cases the bulls were not parallel to the façades they decorated, but perpendicular to them ; 1 they faced the visitor as he approached the gate, and it was not until he entered the passage that he got a side view of their bodies stretching along its walls (Figs. 26 and 27). Some contrivance was sought by which their figures should appear complete from both points of view, and the following expedient was hit upon. As soon as you had entered the passage between the j bulls, you could, of course, no longer see more than the fore- leg nearest you ; the other was hidden by it. The latter L was then repeated by the sculptor and thrown back under the body of the animal, which, in the result, had five legs. The idea is a better one than we are at first inclined to believe. More than once, perhaps, at the Louvre or the British Museum, you have paused before these colossal images, you have measured their height with your eye and admired their tranquil majesty. But have you ever noticed the artifice I have just described ? To see it clearly you must choose a standpoint on the right or left front, as our draughtsman has done (Plates VIII. and IX.). If no chance has led you to such a standpoint in the first instance, if you have, as is most likely, looked at the figure first in front and then from the side, you have probably never suspected the sort of trick that the sculptor has played upon you. This c ontrivance is one of the distinguishing marks of Ninevite art; 2 it occurs nowhere else, u nless in monuments such as those of Cappadocia, which are more or less feeble copies of Assyrian models. 3 The conventions that remain to be noticed will not detain us so long. They are such as have been practised in all im- perfect schools of art, — in all, in fact, that preceded the art of the Greeks. 1 In this particular, the two large bulls from Khorsabad in the British Museum are better placed than the pair in the Louvre. Their position at the entrance to the Khorsabad Transept (?), gives an exact idea of their original arrangement. —Ed. 2 It must not be thought, however, that its employment was universal. In the palace of Sennacherib, at Kouyundjik, and in one of the palaces at Nimroud, the bulls had only four legs. 3 See Perrot and Guillaume, Expédition archéologique de la Gala/ie, vol. i. pp. 345, 346, and vol. h. plate 57.