Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/233

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRYGIAN CIVILIZATION. 217 served to diffuse it among all the peoples in touch with the markets of Mesopotamia. Imitations sprang up everywhere, and everywhere it retained something of the interpretation the plastic art of Chaldseo-Assyria had imparted to the noble forms of the king of ferae. Along with characteristics common to all are differences due to personal temperament and the greater or less degree of skilfulness of the imitators. The workshops of Phoenicia issued countless proofs from this one type ; in their hands, however, it assumed a redundancy of outline not found in the original. Their common- place facility attenuated the accents put there by the firm, vigorous chisel of the Assyrian sculptor. These accents the Hittite artist did his best to preserve ; but his lack of training caused him to exaggerate them. Tradition of this somewhat vulgar make is very apparent in the Phrygian lions. In order to bring out this resemblance, it will be enough to call attention to one characteristic detail, namely, the expedient resorted to by the stone-cutter to mark the shoulder-joint and the salience of the muscles. Here and there they are indicated on the limb by a raised line, oval shaped, instanced in a stela at Merash, 1 the Kalaba lion near Ancyra, 2 and the colossal lion which formed the external decoration of one of the finest tombs of the Ayazeen necropolis (Fig. 120). Observe, also, the strokes, forming a herring-bone pattern, which in the latter work serve to show where the mane ought to be, but scarcely aim at representing it ; do not they remind us of the process employed by the Eyuk sculptor to render the deep folds of skin about the face ? 3 Conventional treatment, dryness, and hardness of make are inherent to both, and place these works far behind Assyrian models ; nevertheless, the Kalaba lion, 4 and even the Eyuk bull, are superior to the art productions of Phrygia of the same class they are instinct with more truth and movement than any animal figures the Phrygian necropolis has to show. Relations in matters of taste and workmanship, resemblances of types and methods, are likewise traceable in the scanty archi- tectural forms revealed in the frontispieces of the Phrygian tombs. One of them is distinguished by a column, whose capital, though simpler and more primitive, in some respects 1 Hist, of Art, torn. iv. Fig. 282. a Ibid., Fig. 350. 3 Ibid., Fig. 340. 4 Ibid., Fig. 339.