Assyria was as ready to mix colour with his contours as his confrère of Egypt, but he made use of it in more sober and re- served fashion. How are we to explain the difference ? It is easier to prove the fact than to give a reason for it. It may be said that the sunlight is less constant and less blinding in Mesopo- tamia than in the Nile valley, and that the artist was not called upon to struggle with such determination, by the profusion and brightness of his colours, against the devouring illumination that impoverishes outlines and obliterates modelling. We must also bear in mind the habits formed by work in such materials as basalt and diorite, which did not lend themselves kindly to the use of bright colours.
In any case the fact itself seems incontestable. We cannot say of the Ninevite reliefs as we said of those of Thebes, that they resembled a brilliant tapestry stretched over the flat wall-surfaces. If, in most of the buildings, touches of paint freely placed upon the accessories and even upon the figures and faces, lightened and varied the general appearance of the sculptures, still the naked stone was left to show all over the bed and over the greater part of the figures. From this we must not conclude, however, that the Assyrians and Chaldaeans did not possess, and possess in a very high degree, the love for bold and brilliant colour-schemes which even now distinguishes their degenerate posterity, the races inhabiting the Euphrates valley and the plateau of Iran. But they gratified their innate and hereditary taste in a different way. It was to their woven stuffs, to their paintings in distemper and their enamelled faience that the build- ings of Mesopotamia owed that gaiety of appearance which has led us to compare them with the mosques of Turkey and Persia.
Si tendre à voir que soit la couleur d'un sein rose,
C'est dans le contour seul, presque immatériel,
Que le souffle divin se relève et dépose
La grâ-je qui l'exprime et ravit l'âme au ciel.
Saluons donc cet art qui, trop haut pour la foule,
Abandonne des corps les éléments charnels,
Et, pur, du genre humain ne garde que le moule,
N'en daigne consacrer que les traits éternels!"
