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430 History of Art in Antiquity. it to hang straight from the shoulders without fold or crease. Here for the first time Oriental sculpture seems to have at- tempted the study of folds, and striven to suggest writh truth and simplicity the aspect a tissue, however thick, should present when draping the body. The line of the sleeves at the wrist is broken into a kind of zigzag ; the sides of the dress are panelled with three or four broad plaits to "set" the petticoat, and be- tween them, in front and at the back, the stuff is lightly draped to £icilitate the forward and back- ward movement of the walk (Figs. 207, 20S). The principle of the arrangement is suggested by nature and the direction the folds will take on the living model ; yet conventionalism and sytem have so large a share in it, that when it reappears in Greek sculp- tures of the sixth century b.c we cannot help being struck with the perfect coincidence. So remark- able is this that the hypothesis of its being due to chance must be dismissed; and if there was borrowing, no one will conceive it possible that the Greeks were the borrowers. Persian art does not exist, so to speak, before ^taJuSxTO^^iJim^rto t^^ Darius ; when the latter, towards 520 B.C, commenced his great architectural works, the very similar treatment of drapery by the Greek sculptor was of considerable standing. That such a mode of interpretation was not suggested to him at a particular date by alien example, but that it corresponds with an important phase of continuous effort and long artistic labour, a whole series of essayals abundantly prove. Study of folds is even traceable in the enamelled bas-reliefs at Susa, but there, owing to the material, they could not be deeply Digitized by Google