Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/518

494 History of Art in Antiquity. give the tone and create a tradition. Put on their mettle» the numerous artisans who helped to complete those collective works, despite inequality of skill, profited in their several degrees by the teaching they got gratis ; hence it is that although the themes are different, although the figures are not distributed about the build- ing as they would in Greece, there is a strong family likeness between Persian sculpture and the Grecian previous to the Medic wars. In proof of this the reader has only to place in juxtaposition the mouldings of any bas-reliefs at Persepolis with those of the fragments that have come down to us of the sculptures of the first temple of Rphesus, erected in the reign of Croesus, when the remarkable analogy of make, and more particularly the treatment of the drapery, cannot fail to strike him. It is the same, though perhaps in a less degree, with sculpture. There, too, we feel, in places, a reflex as it were of the style and the taste of Greece. The resemblance is not one of arrangement in the building, or even of selection of forms, but of execution alone. Thus in principle the Persepoiitan capital is wholly different from that of the several Greek specimens; but among those elements which we think of Asiatic origin, there crops up now an astragal which reminds us of the Ionic capital, now oves and beads that strongly savour of Greece. The same remark applies to the door-cases of the tombs and palaces. Both are surmounted by the Egyptian gorge, and if the three faces in retreat, of which they are composed, reappear about the doorways of Grecian buildings, it is because here and there they are survivals of the posts which surrounded the openings of the wooden house. Superficial inspection of the door-frame would tempt one to afiirm that there is nothing about it which betrays its having been taken from the repertory of the Greek ornamentist ; but if we look at it well we shall carry away (juitc a different impression. Thus in Egypt, around the plain torus of the cornice, are carried fillets traced with the brush ; they are replaced here by a baguette which resembles a chaplet of oves, alternating with discs or round balls (Fig. 15). Similar chaplets, enclosed by elegant fluted baguettes, adorn the inner faces of the jambs and lintels. The cradle-land of all the forms we have passed in review Then, too, the use of the veib deiUderit io connection with Tdephanes' woiks implies that it extended over a certain time and was not accomplished during a flying visit. Digitized by Google