Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/189

SCULPTURE. 1 73 beard falls below the chin. This mode of dressing the beard was in vogue among the nations of Syria and Asia Minor from the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty ; whence it passed to Greece, where it persisted down to the classic age. 1 Long-pointed beards, akin to those of our sculpture, appear in the golden masks of Mycenae. 1 The surface upon which the figures are carved is 5 m. 78 c. long by 2 m. 20 c. high. If we suppose the pictures when complete to have been whole figures, they would average from 2 m. 40 c. to 2 m. 50 c. ; that is to say, far above life size. Despite conventional treatment and too precise a symmetry, effect and nobility were assured to the sculpture by sheer size, truth, and breadth of movement. It conveys in full the idea it was intended to express. There is a felicitous contrast between the huge grimacing head of the Gorgon and the proud bearing of the two victors. The former is a whole head taller than her adver- saries ; the legs are bent at the knee and wide apart, so as to allow the feet of the three actors to rest on the same plane : an arrangement which leads one to imagine a pose for these figures akin to that exhibited in archaic Greek sculpture, to express the idea of swift running. The bas-relief under notice, unknown but yesterday, occupies a place quite by itself in the art productions of Phrygia. In effect, when the native artist wished to endow his great goddess Cybele with a body, all he was able to do was a gigantic puppet, in which no attempt, was made to indicate the features of the face, the nature and arrangement of fold in the drapery. We feel that when occasion offered to attack the human form, he was utterly unable to grapple with it. Thus, in one of the sanctuaries of the plateau, where the latter would seem to have its place marked out, did not he shirk the difficulty and replace the divine simula- crum by an emblem suggesting it (Fig. 106) ? On the other hand, in common with all primitive artists, he is far more at home in his presentation of animal forms ; and in this domain he gives proof of genuine talent and natural gifts. Thus, in the group in which Cybele is represented between two lionesses (Fig. 1 10), whilst the effigy of the goddess is no more than a kind of head- stone or pillar, the general outline of the animals is drawn with precision, and the movement is exactly what it should be. The same impression is felt in presence of the colossal lion, 1 HELBIG, Das Homerische Epos, and edit., pp. 247-256.