The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1891-05-05
ART.
WHAT THE WORLD OWES TO THE ARTS OF
PERSIA,

We talk of what we owe to the arts
of Greece and Rome, and of what they
owed to Egypt. But how often do We
ask or do we realize what they andwe
owe to the art-thought of Persia?
The Persians who call their country
Irvan or Frau, from Arcia, whence our
word Aryan, are first brought promi
nently before us in authentic history
when Cyrus or Kur invaded Asia
Minor, and came in contact with the
Greeks while attacking their colonies
on the eastern shores of the Hgean.
But they were already an old people.
Cyrus was merely representative
of a race Astounding in heroes a race
which had for ages been working west
ward from Central Asia, and had at
last reacheda position where the forces
developed demanded an outlet in
foreign conquest.
During several centuries of this pre-
historic period Persia was alternately
under the dominion of Babylonia or
Chald9ea, and Assyria. That interval
of subsection is one of the most inter
esting and valuable of any known in
the history of the fine arts. The Greek
writer's tell us little or nothing of it's
wonderful results. But if we turn to
the remains of Persian art we meet
records which enable us to trace it's
development perhaps to it's very be-
ginning, and which also indicate one of
the most important features of it's infu-
ence to the present time.
The Akkadians and Chald8ans of
Babylonia, and the Assyrians as we
now know, had distinct art schools of
their own. Before CYrus's time, the
Persian aesthetic genius had been
awakened by contact with the arts of
those peoples, and when the P~ersians
asserted their independence, presum-
ably under FeridOOn, a Persian art
school sprang into existence. Though
suggested by the art of their former
masters, it yet bears the unmistakable
stamp of a great intellectual race-an
art perhaps the most remarkable yet
seen in Asia for its power, but especi-
ally for it's imperishable vitality. The
BabylOnian Ninevite arts came to a
definite close nearly twenty-six hun
dred years ago. But Persia is still
practicing the arts, and her types and
ideas are still potent in directing the
expression of thought in material
forms of beauty, in Western Asia and
in Europe.
The stately columns of Persepolis
present, SO far as we a now discern,
a strictly original style, with their
slender futed shafts peculiar to Persian
architecture up to the pre- sent time,
and reproduced with the same general
motif wherever we find Saracenic art
or suggestions borrowed from it,
whether at Ispahan, COnstantinople,
Cairo, Grenada, or in the Christian
| sty les of Portugal and Spain. The
general form of the bull headed capital,
the bull-heal being omitted but the
spreading outline preserved, is still
followed in Persia. and undoubtedly
had it's influence on the capital of the
Greek, Byzantine, and Gothic orders.
The recent explorations at SuSa, the
Persia, where the remains of three
different palaces are superimpOsed, one
above the other, representing, as it
were, three straitified periods, offer
| oOoo1,1Oixro ovidoT1oo Of 4ho ioA,,Oooo of
the BabylOnian and Assyrian arts on
those of Persia. They present at the
same time decisive evidence of n of
the most congenial forms in which the
Persian mind has preferred to express
it's artistic thought.
What especially we discover at Susa
is a form of Keramic painting, Dor
rOwed from that of Chaldaoa, but sur
passing it, an art which not only x
hibits great technical skill but extra
ordinary ability in design. The pro-
cessiOn of figures found there repre-
senting the Immortals, or royal guards,
is hardly surpassed in the entire range
Of decorative art. The majesty of
those forms, now brought after their
sleep of ages in the Wondering earth
to again look at the sun which their
prototypes worshiped, prepares us to
accept all that we read of the grandeur
of Persia under Darius the Great.
So late as the time of Shah Abbass,
1900 to 1880, pictorial plaques were
made which rival the Keramic designs
of Susa, two thousand years earlier
an emphatic display of the persistence
of a national instinct for a specific stvIe,