Lamassu, God of protection
Inspired by the Lamassu of the Assyrian Empire
Mixed media — sculptural mosaic — Unique work 380 sculoted faces
80x98cm, Part of 1-Cosmogony collection, 2025
Standing in the Khorsabad room at the Louvre in Paris, before the colossal stone guardians of an empire that disappeared three thousand years ago, Karine Mimoun encountered a presence that refused to recede into the past. The Lamassu, part human, part bull, part celestial being, keeper of the threshold between the visible and invisible worlds, was too alive, too insistent, too immediate to be merely historical. This painting is the record of that encounter and the beginning of everything that followed.
In this contemporary interpretation, the Lamassu is woven from 380 sculpted faces, painted in turquoise and lapis-lazuli tonalities, appearing to emerge from the depths of the sea. Hundreds of small waves radiate from the central motif, echoing the relief of the faces in a dialogue between surface and depth.
From isolated fragment to unified symbol, the Lamassu rises like a rock from the ocean, guardian of a mystery that transcends us and asks us to consider our place within a greater whole.
ABOUT THE WORK
The background of the MDF panel is entirely covered in a textured relief of small overlapping waves, radiating outward from the centre of the composition like ripples on the surface of water. The crests of these waves are outlined with a gold mirror-finish metallic marker, so that the surface shimmers with a warm, aquatic light. It is from this luminous sea that the figure of the Lamassu emerges, as though surfacing from the depths rather than standing on solid ground.
The 380 faces that compose the figure are first sculpted individually in plaster, then moulded and cast in several copies before being painted individually and assembled on the panel. Each face evokes a precious stone, its colour and surface treatment chosen to reflect the composite nature of the deity itself. The wings of the Lamassu are rendered in deep blues and violets recalling lapis-lazuli and sodalite, with iridescent hints of azurite. The body is composed of faces in turquoise and copper tonalities evoking chrysocolla and natural turquoise, some adorned with small fragments of gold leaf that catch the light as the eye moves across the surface.
The face of the Lamassu, the human element of this composite deity, is rendered in soft nacreous pinks and pale tones recalling moonstone and rose quartz, giving the figure an unexpected tenderness at its centre. The beard, symbol of authority and wisdom in ancient Assyrian iconography, is composed of faces in lighter, more silvered tones evoking pale smoky quartz, their smaller scale and closer arrangement creating a texture distinct from the broader forms of the body. At the very top of the figure, a row of small golden domes crowns the composition, marking the divine status of the guardian
The Lamassu in Assyrian civilisation
The lamassu were colossal protective deities of ancient Assyria, carved in stone and placed at the entrances of royal palaces and city gates during the height of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-609 BCE). These figures combined the body of a bull or lion, symbols of physical strength and royal power, with human heads wearing horned crowns and eagle wings representing celestial authority. Carved with five legs, they created the visual effect of standing still when viewed from the front and striding forward from the side: guardians perpetually poised between stillness and motion, between the earthly and the divine.
The Khorsabad room at the Louvre in Paris houses some of the most extraordinary surviving lamassu, transported to France in the mid-nineteenth century during the archaeological excavations led by Paul-Emile Botta. These figures, standing over four metres tall, have lost none of their power across three millennia: their composite form, simultaneously human, animal and divine, continues to pose the same question to every visitor who stands before them, what does it mean to guard a threshold, and what lies beyond it
karine mimoun’s interpretation
The Lamassu is the only work in 1-Cosmogony that originated in a specific encounter with an existing object. Karine Mimoun did not come to it through research but through the physical experience of standing in the Khorsabad room at the Louvre and finding herself unable to leave. There was something in the figures that refused to recede into the past, too present, too insistent, too alive. The scale of the colossi, their serene authority, the uncanny modernity of their gaze across three thousand years, produced in her an overwhelming sense that what she was looking at was not history but a question addressed directly to the present. This painting is the record of that encounter and her attempt to answer it.
The technical language of the work was discovered in the making: faces sculpted in plaster, moulded and cast, then painted in trompe-l’oeil to evoke precious gems; a textured background of waves radiating outward from the centre, their crests outlined in gold. These were not choices made in advance but discoveries made in the act of painting, responses to an emotion that needed a form. Simple gestures, found intuitively in the process of responding to what she had felt in that room, that would become the defining visual signature of an entire body of work. In this sense, the Lamassu did not simply inspire a painting; it invented a language.
The Lamassu and the 1-Cosmogony collection
The Lamassu is the founding work of 1-Cosmogony. It was this encounter with the colossal guardians of the Louvre that gave birth to the entire collection, to the concept of unity that runs through each work, and to the artistic language that would define them all: faces painted as gems, gold-crested textured grounds, the assembly of hundreds of human fragments into a single mythic form.
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