e. The complete history of
Chaldaeo-Assyria and its art has yet to be written.

PERSIAN PAINTING.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before cited, Babelon, Duncker,
Lenormant, Ely; Dieulafoy, _L'Art Antique de la Perse_;
Flandin et Coste, _Voyage en Perse_; Justi, _Geschichte des
alten Persiens_; Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in
Persia_.

HISTORY AND ART MOTIVES: The Medes and Persians were the natural
inheritors of Assyrian civilization, but they did not improve their
birthright. The Medes soon lost their power. Cyrus conquered them, and
established the powerful Persian monarchy upheld for two hundred years
by Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes. Substantially the same conditions
surrounded the Persians as the Assyrians--that is, so far as art
production was concerned. Their conceptions of life were similar, and
their use of art was for historic illustration of kingly doings and
ornamental embellishment of kingly palaces. Both sculpture and
painting were accessories of architecture.

Of Median art nothing remains. The Persians left the record, but it
was not wholly of their own invention, nor was it very extensive or
brilliant. It had little originality about it, and was really only an
echo of Assyria. The sculptors and painters copied their Assyrian
predecessors, repeating at Persepolis what had been better told at
Nineveh.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--LIONS' FRIEZE, SUSA. (FROM PERROT AND CHIPIEZ.)]

TYPES AND TECHNIC: The same subjects, types, and technical methods in
bas-relief, tile, and painting on plaster were followed under Darius
as under Shalmanezer. But the imitation was not so good as the
original. The warrior, the winged monsters, the animals all lost
something of their air of brutal defiance and their strength of
modelling. Heroes still walked in procession along the bas-reliefs and
glazed tiles, but the figure was smaller, more effeminate, the hair
and beard were not so long, the drapery fell in slightly indicated
folds at times, and there was a profusion of ornamental detail. Some
of this detail and some modifications in the figure showed the
influence of foreign nations other than the Greek; but, in the main,
Persian art followed in the footsteps of Assyrian art. It was the last
reflection of Mesopotamian splendor. For with the conquest of Persia
by Alexander the book of expressive art in that valley was closed,
and, under Islam, it remains closed to this day.

ART REMAI