292 A HISTORY OF ART ix CHALD.KA AND ASSYRIA. ground is blue, as in the city gates ; green was only used for the leaves of the tree, in which some have recognized a fig-tree. In these two examples the decoration is of an extreme simplicity ; the figures are not engaged in any common action ; there is, in fact, no picture. The artist sometimes appears to have been more ambitious. Thus Layarcl found at Nimroud the remains of a decoration in which the painter had apparently attempted to rival the sculptor : he had represented a battle scene analogous to those we find in such plenty in the bas-reliefs. 1 A similar motive maybe found in a better preserved fragment belonging to the same structure Fro. 124. Detail from enamelled archivolt. Khorsabad. From Place. (Plate XIV, Fig. i). 2 A single brick bears four personages, a god, whose arms only are left, the king, his patera in hand, offering a libation, an eunuch with bow and quiver, and finally an officer with a lance. George Smith also found a fragment of the same kind at Nimroud (see Fig. 125). It shows the figure of a soldier, from the knees upwards, armed with bow and lance, and standing 1 LAYARD, Monuments, 2nd series, plates 53, 54. Elsewhere (Discoveries, pp. 166-168) Layard has given a catalogue and summary description of all these fragments, of which only a part were reproduced in the plates of his great collection. - Ibid, plate 55.
