Fig. 69.—Four-winged genius, Khorsabad (Louvre, 9 ft. 10 in. high).
foreign invasion. Accordingly the figures in these exterior sculptures are of colossal proportions, as it is fitting for gods and heroes. There was also a reason drawn from the laws of perspective in this enlargement of the figures, since the façade of the palace was intended to be seen at a greater distance. The winged bulls at the Louvre, which come from Khorsabad, are from 13 ft. to 16 ft. high. The groups which represent Izdubar, the Assyrian Hercules, strangling a lion under his arm, are as much as 19½ ft. The Assyrians multiplied their winged bulls at the entrance of the doors. Twenty-six pairs of them were found in the palace of Sargon, and as many as ten in a single façade of the palace of Sennacherib. Assyrian texts speak of them as kirubi (cherubim?) or sedi (genii). The considerable projection of their figures from the walls makes them partake of the bas-relief and of the statue in the round at the same time. Some of these bulls have a relief of about 8 in.; placed at the corner of the doors to support the archivolt, they seemed, like Atlas upholding the world, to bear upon their heads the whole mass of the building. Carved on two sides, they are like statues half-buried in the thickness of the wall. They were generally arranged in fours, two being on the plane of the wall, facing one another on each side of the door, and the other two facing the visitor as he entered, while their heads stood out from the façade and their hinder parts remained inside the passage. The visitor arriving from without saw before him at once the bodies of the first two in profile and the full face of the two others. Before the building or within the doorway he still saw at the same time full faces and bodies in profile. By an illusion, he seemed to behold continually, and in every position, the whole of a bearded monster, with his thick mane on his chest, his neck furnished with tufts of hair, his legs, in which the muscles, speaking emblems of material strength, are powerfully marked, his wings formed of rows of plumes, and reaching, like gigantic fans, as high as the archivolt.
Fig. 70.—Winged and human-headed lion (British Museum).
Except in the palace of Sennacherib, these winged bulls, in order that the illusion may be more complete, are represented with five legs; two hind legs and three fore legs, of which two are straight and one is bent. The object of this trick was always to show four legs, whatever might be the position of the spectator. In fact, standing before the beast, the spectator sees his two fore legs; on the side, one of these two being no longer visible, the artist has replaced it by a third which is seen in profile in the background. This quaint device of the Assyrian sculptor is never met with in Egypt.
