Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/452

Style and Execution. Despite the excellent quality of the stone, many portions of the figures look as if they had been peeled off, as if excoriated. The heads are in a deplorable mutilated state, notably in the pictures, most exposed to view, representing the monarch, which decorated the door-frames, where very often nothing remains except the trace left by the mass on the stone (Fig. 191). The blind zeal and stupid wantonness of the Moslems have terribly defaced the features. The best-preserved sculptures occur on the facades of the rock-cut tombs, where their elevated situation saved them from the like fate (Fig. 205), Excavations made at the foot of the substructures have uncovered a certain number that were buried in antiquity under a protecting stratum of rubbish. Though not many, these pieces are almost intact, and (juite encugh to enable the historian to understand the peculiar touches which characterize the sculpture we are considering, and which single it out from that of nations from whom it may have derived some of its models and inspiration. Persian art is connected with that of Asia by a striking: peculiarity ; inasmuch as in the latter, the body appears invari- ably and strictly draped. The warm, equable climate of Egypt and the fine, light texture of her fabrics were the primary causes which developed in her midst a feeling for the beauty of the naked form, such as no other Oriental nation seems to have possessed. From the day of the Achaemenidae (Cambyses), when Egypt became a province of the empire, the Persian sculptor could have borrowed his models thence as easily as the architect ; the surroundings, however, in which his life was spent were against it. As in Assyria, the people he depicted were obliged to wear woollen and leather garments that should protect them against the cold in winter and the heat in summer. Hence it is that he followed on the path traced by his predecessor, the Ninevite sculptor, and search as we may we shall not find a single specimen of the nude in the whole extent of his work. When a short tunic is worn, the arms and lower extremities are naturally bare ; and the modelling of these parts is good, and free from the contortions which characterize similar figures in the sculptures of Assyria (Fig. 206). If occasionally the relief of the veins is given undue prominence (Fig. 207), the markings of the joints and the attachment of the muscles are not exaggerated, as in Mesopotamia, with rude barbarous emphasis whicii seems to be intentional. Digitized by Google