“PAINTING” in the ordinary sense of the word to-day, was an art never practised by the dwellers in Mesopotamia: like all Orientals both the Babylonians and Assyrians were fond of gay colours, and they gratified their taste for such in various ways, but as a rule no attempt was made to faithfully represent the objects of nature through the medium of the brush and the employment of colours alone, and the colours which they used on their sculptured reliefs, their stuccoed walls, or their enamelled bricks, were very frequently entirely impossible from the naturalistic standpoint. Thus the lion of brilliant yellow hue (cf. [frontispiece]), the commonest of all pictorial representations in Babylonia, has no counterpart whatever in real life; the effect is pleasing, it catches the eye, it awakens a sense of appreciation in the spectator, but this is due to the general cheerfulness of the colours themselves, certainly not to their fidelity to nature.
The lion itself bears no comparison with the Babylonian lion represented in Fig. [46]. The action is the same in either case—both lions are proceeding with sure and deliberate step, roaring as they go, but there is a vast difference between the artistic merits of each. The Assyrian lion is not indeed entirely lifeless, but it lacks the freedom and spontaneity which characterize the highest forms of art; the body is also somewhat heavy and clumsy compared with the lion of Ishtar’s Gate.
The colours chiefly employed in Babylonian and Assyrian paintings are blue, yellow and white, while green, red and black are of comparatively rare occurrence. The background of the picture is generally a shade of royal blue, the figures, usually animals, being of a brilliant yellow. In Babylonia, the demand for colours in architectural decoration was naturally more pressing than in Assyria, for in the latter country, where alabaster and limestone were easily procurable, the adornment of the interiors of buildings fell to the sculptor, but in the southern country the dearth of stone at once precluded the possibility of covering the walls even of the palaces with the sculptured bas-reliefs so dear to the heart of apparently all Assyrian monarchs. Thus it was that colour was largely made to take the place of sculpture in Babylonian decoration, the sculptor’s chisel being exchanged for the painter’s brush, though in Assyria sometimes the art of the sculptor and painter were both invoked to beautify the walls of the king’s palace, for in some of the halls in the royal residence of Sargon at Khorsabad the sculptured reliefs on the lower part of the walls were painted;[121] while Layard, after describing some of the wall-reliefs found in the north-west palace at Nimrûd, says:[122] “On all these figures paint could be faintly distinguished, particularly on the hair, beard, eyes and sandals,” which rather suggests that the earlier Assyrian sculptures were only partially coloured. Some of the sculptured bas-reliefs from Ashur-naṣir-pal’s palace at Nimrûd still bear traces of colour, the sandals of many of the figures even now showing the faded red and black paint which at one time covered the soles and upper parts of the sandals respectively, while in one case Ashur-naṣir-pal’s bow still retains traces of red paint. At Khorsabad, on the other hand, colour was used more generally, the raiment and head-gear of the king as well as the harness of the horses, the chariots and the trees, being all painted. Layard says that he was unable to ascertain whether the ground as well as the figures, or parts of the figures, were coloured, but Flandin, in regard to the wall-reliefs at Khorsabad, informs us that he could trace a tint of yellow ochre on all parts not otherwise coloured, while the upper parts of the walls upon which the sculptor had lavished none of his art, were often decorated with frescoes.
But walls plastered with stucco also commanded the attention of the painter as well as those lined with stone bas-reliefs, and Layard discovered the remains of paintings on stucco at Nimrûd, specifically in the upper chambers on the west side of the mound, the rooms of which were constructed of crude bricks coated with plaster and elaborately painted.[123] Most of these paintings do not aspire to anything more than designs, simple or complex as the case may be. In one fresco two bulls are portrayed facing each other; their bodies are white, the ground from which the bulls are carefully delineated by a pronounced black outline, being yellow, while dark blue plays a leading part in the purely decorative accessories at the top of the fresco. Other evidence of the extensive use of paint for the ornamentation of interior walls, was forthcoming in the discovery on the floor of a chamber in the north-west palace of Nimrûd, of “considerable remains of painted plaster still adhering to the sun-dried bricks, which had fallen in masses from the upper part of the wall. The colours, particularly the blues and reds, were as brilliant and vivid when the earth was removed from them, as they could have been when first used. On exposure to the air they faded rapidly. The designs were elegant and elaborate. It was found almost impossible to preserve any portion of these ornaments, the earth crumbling to pieces when any attempt was made to raise it.”[124]
The exteriors of buildings were also sometimes decorated with colour, a notable example being the ziggurat at Khorsabad of which three complete stages together with a part of the fourth were found still remaining. The lowest stage was painted white, the second black, the third red, and the fourth white; doubtless the remaining stages were also painted, the colours being emblematic of the seven planets, as in the case of the traditional temple of Belus at Babylon.
The best example of the Babylonian painter’s art is afforded by the city of Babylon itself. As early as the sixties, the French excavators, Fresnel and Oppert, had collected a large number of single-coloured and multi-coloured fragments of relief bricks. The coating of colour, which was always applied to the narrow sides of the bricks, was sometimes from one to two millimetres thick. Unfortunately this valuable collection was lost, but the statements of the explorers are corroborated by the description of a Babylonian palace wall, contained in the works of Diodorus the historian (circ. 44 B.C.) where he refers to “all manner of shapes of animals on rough bricks with colouring very like that of nature”; and he goes on to say that on the towers and walls were “representations of all kinds of animals, and as far as colouring and shape went, well done. The whole represented a hunt, where everything was full of animals of all kinds, and in size more than four yards. In this was also represented Semiramis, on horseback, in the act of throwing the spear after a panther, and a short distance off her husband, Ninus, stabbing a lion with a lance.”[125] Nebuchadnezzar himself further alludes to the pictures of wild oxen and colossal serpents, which he caused to be portrayed on blue enamelled bricks as decorations for the gates. Most of the glazed and coloured tiles found at Babylon resemble coloured bas-reliefs, the figures of the animals standing out in relief on a blue background generally, though sometimes the ground is green. The brick-enameller’s art reaches its climax in the Lion-frieze which adorned the Procession Street of Marduk, at Babylon. One of these clay bas-relief lions is seen in Fig. [46].[126] The ground is dark blue, the monotony of which is varied by the introduction of yellow stripes and the white rosettes already so familiar from the enamelled bricks of Khorsabad. The lion itself, the proportions of which are excellent, stands out in white alabaster clay, and the whole work is more perfect in technique than the Persian lion frieze at the Louvre, which it in some ways resembles. What detracts from the artistic merit of the latter is the disproportion which the body bears to the fore-part and head, both of them being too small, but the Babylonian lion is almost entirely free from this defect. The discovery of the Ishtar Gate at Babylon added another bounteous supply of material for the study of Babylonian painting: here too the coloured representations on the enamelled bricks were in relief. The walls of the gate were found preserved to a height of thirty-nine feet, the whole of the wall being covered with animals, principally bulls and dragons, of which there were at least eleven rows.
Fig. 46.—Enamelled brick relief from Babylon. (After Andrae.)