Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/132

I20 History of Art in Antiquity. although minute details have been eliminated, so as not to distract and bewilder the eye, all his distinctive features are well brought out. The tufts of hair on the neck and back, the shoulder, dew- lap, and haunches of the animal are firmly massed into ringlets, whose outline yields a more vigorous relief than if suffered to fell about in picturesque disorder, whilst the collar depending from his neck, the rosettes and gem falling on his breast, warn us not to attach any idea of reality to the ferine, inasmuch as these arc sacred and almost divine beings, modelled and created afresh, as it ^ were, by the artist so as to fit them for the function slUotted to them. In the movement of the head, slightly bent forward and turned on one side, there is a look of untamable power which seems to run through the huge body. The muscular development of the lower limbs of the bull, folded under the belly, are drawn 'with a bold hand ; we feel that he might at any moment weary of his eternal repose, and, rising on his haunches, at one swoop bound from his elevated position. So have I felt, at least as often as I have stood in front of the colossal capital Dieulafoy has deposited at tiie Louvrc! ; among the visitors that thronged the hall, even those from whom you would least expect it, all were brought under the spell, and, in one way or another, acknowledged the noble and strange beauty of the peculiar type before thenu If a mere fragment is capable of exciting such sensations as these, would not our enjoyment be enhanced a hundred-fold could we see it in its integrity, at the summit of the fluted column, acoom* panied by a long series of capitals supporting, like this, an entablature warm with colour and gilding ? The pencil and the brush are less powerless than mere words in bringing home some notion of the forms in question, and the effect they must have produced on the beholder. We cannot, therefore, do better than refer the reader to the restorations of M. Chipiez (Plates III., v., and VII.). Secondary Forms. The survey of Persian membering serves to confirm the hypo- thesis suggested by the study. Art, after Cyrus and Cambyses, was developed during the prosperous and brilliant reign of Darius, when it admitted new shapes, which, though lacking variety, are ampler and richer than those it had been satisfied with at the outset. «  r v: Digitized by Google