Art Motives and Methods of Babylonian-Assyrian Painting
Building, craving and painting were practiced among the coastwise nations, but upon no such extensive scale as in either Egypt or Assyria.
The mere fact that they were people of the sea rather than of the land precluded extensive or concentrated development.
Politically Phoenicia was distributed in a similar manner.
Such art as was produced showed the religious and decorative motives and in its spiritless materialistic make-up the commercial motive.
It was at the best a hybrid mongrel art, borrowed from many sources and distributed to many points of the compass.
At one time it had a strong Assyrian cast, at another an Egyptian cast and after Greece arose it accepted a retroactive influence from there.
Future research may disclose that it was also susceptible to influences from Cretan and Hittite art.
Conclusions as to any of this early Mediterranean art cannot as yet be accepted with certainty.
It is impossible to characterize the Phoenician type and even the Cypriote type, though more pronounced, varies so with the different influences that it has no very striking individuality.
Technically both the Phoenician and Cypriote were fair workmen in bronze and stone, and doubtless taught many technical methods to the early Greeks besides making known to them those deities afterward adopted under the names of Aphrodite, Adonis and Heracles and familiarizing them with the art forms of Egypt and Assyria.
As for painting, there was undoubtedly figured decoration upon walls of stone and plaster, but there is not enough left to us from all the small nations like Phoenician, Judea, Cyprus, and the Kingdom of Asia minor, put together to patch up a disjointed history.
The first lands to meet the spoiler, their very ruins have perished.
All that there is of painting comes to us is broken potteries and color traces on statuary and sarcophagi.
The remains of the sculpture and architecture are of course better preserved.
None of this intermediate art holds much rank by virtue of its inherent worth.
It is its influence upon the West – the ideas, subjects, and methods it imparted to the the Greeks – that gives it value in art history.
Art Motives and Methods of Babylonian-Assyrian Painting
