Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/259

GEMS. 235 end of his labour approached, he saw that a better result would be obtained if he filled up the void at the top of his right-hand compartment, and he did so with a group for the idea of which he had not far to go. The winged sphinx certainly appeared in Assyria at the time of the Sargonids, and after the conquests of Syria and Egypt ; but Mesopotamian artists gave it neither the. fine proportions nor raised wings we see here ; l in this form it is only to be met with on those ivories which themselves may have issued from Phoenician workshops. 2 It is not to be found in any Chaldaeo- Assyrian cone or cylinder of certain origin. In Phoenicia on the other hand, and in Cyprus, these winged sphinxes, some- times back to back but more often facing each other, are every- where ; they are used to decorate buildings and portable objects ; they are found upon engraved gems (Fig. 152); they are, in fact, hackneyed, and in putting them on this cylinder the Cypriot artist has in a sense signed his work. FIG. 152. Engraved gem in M. Peretie's Collection. From De Vogue. If the foreign imitator can be detected here, where the work is so carefully done, still more easily can we recognize him where the model has not been so closely followed ; only those who have examined the whole series can believe how rough and awkward the execution of these cylinders is. It is not the halting execution of archaism, through which a sincere and even powerful effort can be so often discerned ; it is the negligence of haste, of artists who copy types without understanding, or caring to understand, their meaning ; the handling is rapid and superficial ; the tool has little more than scratched the stone, and as if to make quantity make up for quality, the artist has extravagantly multiplied his figures ; his field is encumbered with objects which seem, as often as not, to have little or no relation with each other. Here is a cylinder from Salamis, which may be taken as a fair example (Fig. 153). In the centre a personage holds up two nondescript animals 1 Art in Chaldaa and Assyria, Vol. I. Figs. 38-85. 2 Ibid. Vol. II. Figs. 58 and 59.