Inventing Assyria: exoticism and reception in nineteenth-century England and France

I still think the Nineveh marbles are not valuable as works of art. . . .Can a mere admirer of the beautiful view them with pleasure? Certainly not, and in this respect they are in the same category with the paintings and sculptures of Egypt and India. . . . We have specimens of the very highest art - and anything short of that is, as a work of art . . . valueless, for it can neither instruct nor enrapture us. I hope you understand this distinction and when I criticise design and execution, will understand I do so merely because your winged God is not the Apollo Belvedere.(48)

Throughout both France and England, there was little dispute over the antiquarian value of the Assyrian discoveries or the presumed right of European powers to appropriate these artifacts. But Layard's highlighting of the Assyrian artifact as aesthetic object, his concentration on the mode of aesthetic validation kept strictly subordinate by Botta, conflicted with the values of his sponsors. Aesthetic versus nonaesthetic, work of art versus antiquarian artifact: this becomes a further binary pairing in which the Western image of Assyria oscillates. Attention to the purely visual appearance of the Assyrian objects, in the aestheticizing framework suggested by Layard, is perceived to upset a tenet of conventional artistic taste: the dominance of the works of classical antiquity. This is a crucial moment in the reception of the Assyrian artifacts, the first intimation that transplanting the objects to Europe would not merely confirm historical and nationalist beliefs but also might have the power to interfere with established aesthetic doctrine.

Emphasis on aesthetic evaluation, or even extended attention to the visual features of Assyrian works, thus posed a threat that other forms of evaluation did not. In England, the aesthetic approach had clear social implications, carrying the works beyond the narrow circle that initially sponsored Layard's excavations. In a piece excerpted in the antiquarian periodical Athenaeum, for instance, Layard wrote of Botta's discoveries in a way that honors all three touchstones of evaluation while defiantly highlighting the aesthetic appeal of Assyrian art:

. . . they are immeasurably superior to the stiff and ill-proportioned figures of the monuments of the Pharoahs. They discover a knowledge of the anatomy of the human frame, a remarkable perception of character, and wonderful spirit in the outlines and general execution. In fact, the great gulf which separates barbarian from civilized art has been passed.(49)

Without precisely calling the works equal to Greek art, Layard still clearly sets Assyria above the level of Egypt, to which Rawlinson had confined it. A paragraph notice on Botta appeared soon after in the Penny Magazine, foremost among the cheap, popular, widely circulated magazines then proliferating in England. Notably, the Penny Magazine cites Athenaeum as its source and closely follows Layard's language, but it concentrates almost exclusively on his aesthetic evaluation. It refers to "exquisite taste," "remarkable knowledge of anatomy," "great intelligence and harmony of composition" and similar features of the artifacts? Thus, especially through Layard's frame of aesthetic reification, the news of the Assyrian discoveries broke out of the smaller, more rarefied circle represented by Athenaeum for the much larger, lower-class readership of the Penny Magazine.