Part 21 (2/2)
Such precautions were rendered comparatively useless by the fact that the whole work was faulty at the base. Halls and chambers had no solid foundation or pavement, so that the heavy slabs of their decoration rested upon a s.h.i.+fting soil, quite incapable of carrying them without flinching.
In many places they sank some inches into the ground, the soft earth behind pus.h.i.+ng them forward, and in their fall the row to which they belonged was inevitably involved. The excavators have again and again found whole lines of bas-reliefs that appeared to have fallen together. Such an accident is a thing for posterity to rejoice over. p.r.o.ne upon a soft and yielding soil the works of the sculptor are better protected than when standing erect, their upper parts clear, perhaps, of the ruin that covers their feet, and exposed to the weather at least, and, too often, to the brutality of an ignorant population.
Such defects are sufficient to prove that these slabs were never meant to carry any great weight; far from affording a support to the wall behind, they required one to help them in maintaining their own equilibrium. On the other hand they protected it, as we have said above, from too rapid deterioration.
At Khorsabad this stone casing is in very bad condition at many points, in the halls and pa.s.sages of the outbuildings and in the courtyards adjoining the city gates for instance.[332] There the stones are only smoothed down, and their obvious purpose is merely to protect the crude brick within. The purely architectural origin of this system of casing is thus clearly shown.
But the presence of these slabs set upright against the wall offered a temptation to the ambitious architect that he was not likely to resist. The limestone and alabaster of which they were composed afforded both a kindly surface for the chisel, and a certain guarantee of duration for the forms it struck out. In every a.s.syrian palace we may see that the king, its builder, had a double object in view, the glorification of the G.o.ds, and the transmission to posterity of his own image and the memory of his reign.
To these ends the architect called in the sculptor, under whose hands the rudely dressed slabs took the historic forms with which we are familiar.
Of all parts of the palace the doorways were most exposed to injury from the shocks of traffic, and we find their more solid plinths surmounted by higher and thicker slabs than are to be found elsewhere. These slabs are carved with the images of protecting divinities. Huge winged and man-headed bulls (Plate X)[333] or lions (Fig. 114), the speaking symbols of force and thought, met the approaching visitor. Sometimes a lion, reproducing with singular energy the features of the real beast, was subst.i.tuted for the human-headed variety (Plate VIII).[334]
These guardians of the gate always had the front part of their bodies salient in some degree from the general line of the wall. The head and breast, at least, were outside the arch. Right and left of the pa.s.sage were very thick slabs, also carved into the form of winged bulls in profile, and accompanied by protecting genii. These latter divinities are sometimes grave and n.o.ble in mien, obviously benevolent (Figs. 8 and 29), sometimes hideous in face, and violent in gesture. In the latter case they are meant to frighten the profane or the hostile away from the dwelling they guard (Figs. 6 and 7). All these figures are in much higher relief than the sculptures in the inner chambers.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 114.--Human-headed lion. Nimroud; from Layard.]
All this shows that the sculptor thoroughly understood how to make the best of his opportunities when he was once called in to ornament those ma.s.sive door-frames and slabs which at first were no more than additional supports for the building to which they were applied. He varied the shapes of these blocks according to their destined sites, and increased their size so as to give gigantic proportions to his man-headed bulls and lions. Some of the winged bulls are from sixteen to seventeen feet high.[335] In spite of the labour expended upon the carving and putting in place of these huge figures, they are extremely numerous, hardly less so, indeed, than the Osiride piers of Egypt.[336] In the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, twenty-six pairs have been counted; in that of Sennacherib at Kouyundjik, there were ten upon a single facade.[337]
In those pa.s.sages, halls, and courtyards, whose destination justified such a luxury, the sculptor utilized the stone lining of the walls with equal skill, but in a slightly different spirit. The figures on the facade had to be seen from a great distance, and were exposed to the full light of the Mesopotamian sun, so that their colossal proportions and the varied boldness of their relief had an obvious justification. The sculptures in the interior were smaller in scale and were strictly _bas-reliefs_. With the shortening of the distance from which they could be examined, their scale was made to conform more closely to the real stature of human beings.
In some very s.p.a.cious halls a few of the figures are larger than life, while in the narrowest galleries they become very small, the alabaster slabs being divided into two stories or more (see Fig. 115).[338]
There is another singularity to be noticed _apropos_ of these sculptures.
The themes treated outside are very different from those inside the palaces. The figures in the former position are religious and supernatural, those in the interior historical and anecdotic. There is much variety in the details of these narrative sculptures, but their main theme is always the glorification, and, in a sense, the biography of the sovereign.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 115.--Bas-relief with several registers. Width 38 inches. Louvre. Drawn by Bourgoin.]
In the Egyptian temple the figures which form its _illumination_ are spread indifferently over the whole surface of the walls. In a Greek temple, on the other hand, sculpture was confined with rare exceptions to the upper part of the building, to the pediments chiefly, and the frieze. The a.s.syrian method was neither that of the Egyptians nor that of the Greeks.
At Nineveh, the sculptor did not, as in Egypt, sow his figures broadcast over the whole length and breadth of the building, neither did he raise them, as in Greece, above the heads of the crowd; he marshalled them upon the lowest part of a wall, upon its plinth. Their feet touched the soil, their eyes were on a level with those that looked at them; we might say that they formed an endless procession round every hall and chamber. The reasons for such an arrangement are to be sought for, not in any aesthetic tendency of the a.s.syrian artist, but in the simple fact that only in the stone cuira.s.s, within which the lower parts of the brick walls were shut up, could he find the kindly material for his chisel. Nowhere else in the whole building could the stone, without which his art was powerless, be introduced.
But as the lateral development of a.s.syrian buildings was great, so too was the field offered to the a.s.syrian sculptor. It has been calculated that the sculptured slabs found in the palace of Sargon would, if placed in a row, cover a distance of nearly a mile and a half. Their superficies is equal to about an acre and a half. By this it will be seen that sculpture played an important part in the decoration of an a.s.syrian palace, but as it was confined to the lower part of the walls, some other method had to be invented for ornamenting those surfaces on which the chisel could not be used. In Chaldaea, where there was so little stone, it was practically the whole building that had to be thus contrived for. In both countries the problem was solved in the same fas.h.i.+on--by the extensive use of enamelled brick and painted stucco, and the elaboration of a rich, elegant, and withal original system of polychromy.
Explorers are unanimous in the opinion that neither burnt nor sun-dried brick was ever left without something to cover its nakedness. It was always hidden and protected by a coat of stucco.[339] At Nineveh, according to M.
Place, this stucco was formed by an intimate mixture of burnt chalk with plaster, by which a sort of white gum was made that adhered very tightly to the clay wall.[340] Its peculiar consistence did not permit of its being spread with a brush; a trowel or board must have been used. The thickness of this cement was never more than one or two millimetres.[341] Its cohesive force was so great that in spite of its thinness it acted as an efficient protector. It has often been found in excellent condition, both upon flat and curved surfaces, upon the walls of courtyards and chambers, on the under sides of vaults, wherever in fact a stone casing did not supply its place.
It would seem that some buildings had no outward ornament beyond the brilliant whiteness of this stucco, the effect of which may be seen at the present day in the whitewashed houses of the East. The glare of such a wall was happily contrasted with the soft verdure that sometimes grew about it, and the dark blue of the sky against which its summit was relieved. Such a contrast gives importance and accent to the smallest building, as painters who treat the landscapes of the South thoroughly understand.
We have reason to believe, however, that as a rule the white stucco served as a background and support to other colours. No Chaldaean interiors have come down to us, while the exteriors are in such bad preservation that we can hardly form any true judgment of the colours and designs with which they were once adorned. But in the case of a.s.syria we know pretty well how the decorator understood his business, and it is probable that, like his colleagues, the architect and the sculptor, he was content to perpetuate the traditions of his Chaldaean masters.
In certain cases the decorator makes use of wide unbroken tints. This is the simplest way of using colour. In the palace of Sargon, for instance, wherever the sculptured slabs are absent we find a plinth painted black in distemper. These plinths are from two to nearly four feet high, according to the extent of the courts or chambers in which they occur. The object of such a dado is clear; it was to protect the lower part of the wall, if not against deliberate violence, at least against dirt. A white stucco in such a position would soon have been disfigured by spots and various marks which would be invisible on a black background. Moreover, the contrast between the plinth and the white wall above it must have had a certain decorative effect.[342]
This coloured dado is to be found even in places to which it seems quite unsuited. At Khorsabad, for instance, it runs across the foot of those semicircular pilasters we noticed in one of the harem chambers (Fig. 101).
These pilasters stand upon a plinth between three and four feet high, so that any contact with the dirt of the floor need not have been feared. The existence of the dado in such a position is to be accounted for by supposing that the decorator considered it as the regular ornament for the bottom of a wall. It is more difficult to understand why the alcoves believed by MM. Place and Thomas to have been bedrooms were in each case painted with this same band of black.[343]
The most curious example of the employment of unbroken tints to which we can point, is in the case of M. Place's observatory. The stages of that building were each about twenty feet high, and each was painted a colour of its own; the first was white, the second black, the third red, the fourth white. When the excavations were made, these tints were still easily visible. The building seems originally to have had seven stages, and the three upper ones must certainly have been coloured on the same principle as those below them. In his restoration, Thomas makes the fifth vermilion, the sixth a silver grey, while he gilds the seventh and last.[344] In this choice and arrangement of tints there is nothing arbitrary. It is founded on the description given by Herodotus of Ecbatana, the capital of the Medes. ”The Medes ... built the city now called Agbatana, the walls of which are of great size and strength, rising in circles one within the other. The plan of the place is, that each of the walls should out-top the one beyond it by the battlements. The nature of the ground, which is a gentle hill, favours this arrangement in some degree, but it was mainly effected by art. The number of the circles is seven, the royal palace and the treasuries standing within the last. The circuit of the outer wall is very nearly the same with that of Athens. Of this wall the battlements are white, of the next black, of the third scarlet, of the fourth blue, of the fifth orange; all these are coloured with paint. The two last have their battlements coated respectively with silver and gold.”[345]
Between the series of colours found upon the ruin in question and the list here given by Herodotus there is, so far as they go, an ident.i.ty which cannot be due to chance. The Medes and Persians invented nothing; their whole art was no more than an eastern offshoot from that of Mesopotamia. It was in Chaldaea that the number seven first received an exceptional and quasi sacred character. Our week of seven days is a result from the early wors.h.i.+p of the five great planets and of the sun and moon. There were also the seven colours of the rainbow. From such indications as these the early architects of a.s.syria must have determined the number of stages to be given to a religious building; they also regulated the order of the colours, each one of which was consecrated by tradition to one of those great heavenly bodies. We can easily understand how the silver white of the penultimate stage was chosen to symbolize the moon, while the glory of the gold upon the upper story recalled that of the noonday sun.
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