A GYPSUM RELIEF FRAGMENT, POSSIBLY ASSYRIAN , CIRCA 8TH-7TH CENTURY B.C. OR LATER

拍品描述

A GYPSUM RELIEF FRAGMENT, POSSIBLY ASSYRIAN, CIRCA 8TH-7TH CENTURY B.C. OR LATER Of tapering upright form, the reddish-brown gypsum slab carved in low relief with a central vertical band of lozenges filled with dense cross-hatching, flanked on either side by a symmetrically disposed leafy tree or vegetal spray, its foliage rendered as tightly striated ovate leaves clustered along curving stems. The central band terminates at the upper edge in a pointed finial framed by scrolling volutes, above which the surface rises to a broken apex. The lateral edges are chipped and the reverse left roughly dressed. The stone retains a warm russet patina with pale calcareous encrustation along the upper left break. The design belongs to a well-established Near Eastern repertoire in which a formalised tree, often described in the scholarly literature as the sacred or stylised tree, occupies the field as an axial motif. Here the tree is not shown as a single trunk but resolved into a central scaled or netted column, from which paired leafy branches spring in mirrored pairs. The lozenge-and-scale field at the centre recalls the netted "trunk" of Assyrian palace-relief trees, where the interlaced pattern is generally read as a schematic rendering of intertwined boughs or a knotted vegetal core. The flanking foliage, arranged in rising symmetrical registers, follows the same organising principle as the palmette and cone friezes carved along the dados of Neo-Assyrian royal apartments. Gypsum alabaster of this reddish tonality was the standard sculptural medium of the Neo-Assyrian court at Nimrud, Nineveh, and Khorsabad, quarried in the hills east of the Tigris and prized for its softness under the chisel and its capacity to hold sharp linear detail. The relief was traditionally cut shallow and then enriched with finely incised patterning, exactly the technique visible here in the striated leaves and the punched lozenge grid. The subject, format, and finish are consistent with the ornamental panels and door-jamb reliefs of the great Assyrian palaces, though the schematic handling of the foliage and the reduced, almost pattern-book treatment of the tree suggest either a provincial workshop, a later reworking of the Assyrian vocabulary, or a post-Assyrian survival of the motif into the Achaemenid or later Mesopotamian tradition. The qualified attribution reflects this uncertainty. The sacred tree was among the most enduring images of Mesopotamian visual culture, associated with kingship, fertility, and the ordered cosmos, and frequently flanked in Assyrian art by winged genii performing acts of purification. Reduced here to its vegetal essentials, without attendant figures, the composition preserves the schema in an abbreviated devotional or architectural form. This fragment exemplifies the long afterlife of the Assyrian sacred tree as a decorative and symbolic formula in Mesopotamian stone carving. Whether cut in the late Neo-Assyrian period itself or in a subsequent revival, it preserves the essential grammar of the palace reliefs, the axial trunk, the mirrored foliage, and the incised linear finish, in a compressed and self-contained field. Dimensions: Height: 71 cm; Height on stand: 78 cm

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