Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/213

Chaldean Sculpture. •83 passages. The strongly-marked muscles of the back and the freedom with which the bony framework is shown under the flesh and skin should also be noticed. All these parts are treated with a breadth that gives a fine look of power to the otherwise short and thick-set figure. And yet the vigour of the handling never goes beyond what is sober and discreet (Fig. 98). The same character is to be found in the hands, where joints, bones, and nails are studied with minute care, and in the feet, where power of foothold and the shapes of the toes are thoroughly well indicated. The treatment of the two heads is no less excellent (Plate VII). The eyes are straight and widely opened; the heavy brows join in the middle ; the strong and salient chin, as well Fig. 97. — The hands of a statue ; from Tello. Louvre. Drawn by Bourgoin. as the crown of the head, is shaved in the fragment in which it is left bare. 1 Under the kind of hat or turban in the other 1 Some may be inclined to think that the bald head may once have been protected by a covering cut from a separate block. This idea was suggested to us by the existence in the British Museum of a kind of wig of black stone (Nimroud Gallery, case H). It is carved to imitate hair, and, in front, has a kind of crest, the whole being cut from one piece of stone. It may have been used to surmount a limestone figure, and the contrast between the light colour of the one material, and the blackness of the other would be neither unpleasant nor unfitting. In another case (A) of the same gallery, we find beards and wigs made some of glass, others of a sandy frit imitating lapis-lazuli. The use of these disconnected pieces must then have been very wide-spread. But we doubt whether the Tello head ever had such a covering, because that part of its surface which would in such a case have been hidden from sight, is finished with the same care as all the rest. If the artist had included a wig in his calculations, would he have taken the pains he did with the modelling and polishing of the cranium ?