A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 28

This is the great distinguishing characteristic of the Egyptian style.

The uniformity, stiffness, and restraint of the att.i.tudes, the over-rigorous symmetry of the parts and of the limbs, and the close alliance of the latter with the bodies, are only secondary features.

We shall find them in the works of every race compelled to make use of materials that were either too hard or too soft. Moreover, these are the constant characteristics of archaic art, and it must not be forgotten that even in Egypt many wooden and limestone figures have been unearthed which surprise us by the freedom of their att.i.tudes and movements. The true originality of the Egyptian style consists in its deliberately epitomizing that upon which the artists of other countries have elaborately dwelt, in its lavishing all its executive powers upon chief ma.s.ses and leading lines, and in the marvellous judgment with which it seizes their real meaning, their proportions, and the sources of their artistic effect.

As figures increased in size this tendency towards the suppression of detail increased also, and so too did their fitness for the architectonic _role_ they had to play. The colossi which flank the entrances to an Egyptian temple have been often criticised from an erroneous standpoint. They have been treated as if they were meant to be self-sufficient and independent. Their ma.s.siveness and want of vitality have been blamed; it has been said that the seated figures could not rise, nor the standing ones walk. To form a just estimate of their merit we must take them with the monuments of which they formed a part. We must rouse our imaginations, and picture them to ourselves with their flanking colonnades about them, with the pylons at their backs, and the obelisks at their sides. We must close our eyes for a moment and reconstruct this combination of architectural and sculpturesque lines. We shall then readily perceive how entirely these colossi were in harmony with their surroundings. Their vertical and horizontal lines echoed those of the monument to which they were attached. The rhythm of the long colonnades was carried on by their repet.i.tion of a single att.i.tude, while their colossal dimensions and immovable solidity brought them into complete accord with the huge structures by which they were surrounded. It has been said that, more than any of its rivals, "the architecture of Egypt impresses us with the idea of absolute stability, of infinite duration." Could anything be in more complete harmony with such an art than the grave and majestic att.i.tudes of these seated Pharaohs, att.i.tudes which from every line breathe a profound calm, a repose without change and without end.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV.

PAINTING.

-- 1. _Technical Processes._

Most of our observations upon Egyptian sculpture are applicable to the sister art of painting. The conventions which form the characteristic originality of the Egyptian style were established by the sculptor; but when the artist had to draw the outline of a form, and to fill it in with colour instead of cutting it upon the naked surface of the wall, the difference of process did not affect his method of comprehending and interpreting his models. We find the same qualities and the same defects. The purity of line, the n.o.bility of pose, the draughtsmanship at once just and broad, the ignorance of perspective, and the constant repet.i.tion of traditional att.i.tudes are found in both methods. Painting, in fact, never became an independent and self-sufficing art in Egypt. It was commonly used to complete sculpturesque effects, and it never freed itself from this subordination. It never attempted to make use of its own peculiar resources for the expression of those things which sculpture could not compa.s.s--the depths of s.p.a.ce, the recession of planes, the varieties of hue which pa.s.sion spreads over the human countenance, and the nature and intensity of the feelings which are thus betrayed. We may say that it is only by some abuse of terms that we can speak of _Egyptian painting_ at all. No people have spread more colour upon stone and wood than the Egyptians; none have had a more true instinct for colour harmony; but yet they never attempted to express, by the gradation of tone, by the juxtaposition or superposition of tints, the real aspects of the surfaces which present themselves to our eyes, aspects which are unceasingly modified by the amount of light or shadow, by distance and the state of the atmosphere. They had not the least glimmering of what we call chiaroscuro or of aerial perspective.

Their painting rests upon conventions as audacious as those of their sculpture. In it every surface has an uniform and decided value though in nature everything is shaded. A nude figure is all one colour--dark for a man, light for a woman. A drapery has but one tone, the artist never seeming to trouble himself whether it be in light or shadow, or partly in one partly in the other. In a few plates in Lepsius, and still more in Prisse,[327] there are suggestions that an artist here and there, more skilful than his rivals, understood that values differed, and distinguished in his more careful work between colour in shadow and colour in light. One or two contours appear to hint at the rotundity of chiaroscuro. In accepting such a suggestion, however, we should be making a mistake against which we have been warned even by such early travellers as the authors of the _Description_.[328] The effects in question must be placed to the credit of the sculptor. The images in which they appear are painted bas-reliefs, and the slight shadow thrown by their salient grounds gives an appearance of half-tint to their contours. Wherever pictures are without relief there is no such appearance, and yet changes of value would in them be more useful than elsewhere.

[327] Vol. ii. plates 41, 66, and 70.

[328] _Description, Antiquites_, vol. iii. p. 45.

To place unbroken colours in juxtaposition to each other without transitions is to illuminate; it is not painting in the true sense of the word, and its pract.i.tioner is an artisan rather than an artist.

The artist is he who traces the design upon the walls, who, chalk in hand, sketches the forms of men and women and the lines of the ornament. Many of these sketches are admirable for the freedom and breadth of their outline. The portrait of Amenophis III. which is to be seen in his tomb in the Bab-el-Molouk is a good example of these master-studies (Fig. 263). When nothing interfered to prevent the completion of the work, the painter came with his palette and brushes to spread colour over the s.p.a.ces enclosed by these lines. Nothing could be easier than his task. He was only required to lay his colours smoothly, and to avoid overpa.s.sing the boundaries laid down for him.

The hues of the flesh and of the draperies were fixed in advance as well as those of the various objects which were repeatedly introduced in such works.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 263.--Outline for a portrait of Amenophis III.

Champollion, pl. 232.]

At Beni-Ha.s.san, and in several of the Theban tombs, there are representations of the painter at work. When he had to spread a single tint over a large surface--brown, for instance, upon the whole superficies of a limestone statue--we see him seated upon a kind of stool, his pot of colour in his left hand, his brush in his unsupported right (Fig. 54 Vol. I.). Sometimes his work was more complicated than this. There are a few royal portraits, and a few scenes with numerous actors, in which the whole scale of tints at his command must have been required. He then makes use of a palette.

Specimens of these palettes are to be seen in every museum. They are rectangular pieces of wood, of alabaster, or of enamelled earthenware.

They usually have seven little colour cups, but a few have as many as eleven or twelve. Small _styles_, as large as a crow-quill, have been found with these palettes. The use of these has been much discussed.

Prisse cut one and steeped it in water. It was then discovered that the reed of which it was composed became a brush when its fibres were thus softened by moisture.[329] None of the large brushes which must have been used to spread the colour over considerable surfaces have been discovered, but Prisse believes that they too must have been made of fibrous reeds, such as the sarmentose stems of the _Salvadora persica_. Others think that for such purposes the hair pencil must have been employed.

[329] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, text, p. 289.

Cakes of colour have sometimes been found in the tombs, together with earthenware mortars and pestles for grinding them. The tints usually employed were _yellow_, _red_, _blue_, _green_, _brown_, _white_, and _black_. These correspond to the seven cups hollowed in most of the palettes. They each included several varieties. Some of these colours were vegetable, such as indigo; others--and these more numerous--were mineral. Among the latter is a certain blue, which has preserved all its brilliancy even after so many centuries. Its merits were extolled by Theophrastus and Vitruvius. It is an ash with wonderful power of resisting chemical agents, and neither turning green nor black with exposure to the air. It must have been composed, we are told, of sand, copper-filings, and subcarbonate of soda reduced to powder and burnt in an oven. Copper is also the colouring principle, at least in our days, of those greens which are more or less olive in tone. Different shades of red, yellow, and brown, were obtained from the ochres. Their whites, formed of lime, of plaster, or of powdered enamel, have sometimes preserved a snowy whiteness beside which our whitest papers seem grey.[330] As for violet, Champollion tells us that no colour used by the ancients had that value. In those few bas-reliefs in which it is now found, it is a result of the changes which time has spread over surfaces originally gilded. The hue in question is caused, we are told, by the mordant or other preparation upon which the gold was laid.[331]

[330] Fuller details as to the composition of these colours are given in PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, text, pp.

292-295. A paper written by the father of Prosper Merimee and printed by Pa.s.salacqua at the end of his _Catalogue_ (pp. 258, et seq.) may also be consulted with profit; its full t.i.tle is _Dissertation sur l'Emploi des Couleurs, des Vernis, et des emaux dans l'Ancienne egypte_, by M. MeRIMeE, _Secretaire Perpetuel de l'ecole Royale des Beaux-Arts_. This paper shows that M. Merimee added taste and a love for erudition to the talent as a painter which he is said to have possessed. BELZONI shows that the manufacture of indigo must have been practised by the ancient Egyptians by much the same processes as those in use to-day (_Narrative of the Operations_, etc. p. 175). See also WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc. vol. ii. p. 287.

[331] CHAMPOLLION, _Lettres d'egypte et de Nubie_, p. 130.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OFFERINGS TO THE DEAD

FRAGMENT OF A FUNERARY PAINTING ON PLASTER

(XVIIIth Dynasty)]

In the Theban tombs the figures are first drawn and then painted upon a fine coat which has all the polish of stucco. It seems to consist of a very fine plaster and a transparent glue. It is still white where no tint has been laid upon it; here and there its shining surface is still undimmed.[332] When the pictures were executed upon wood or, as in the mummies, upon linen laid down upon a thin layer of plaster, a preparatory coat of white was always spread in the first instance. The tints became more brilliant over such a coat, the most opaque being in some degree transparent.[333]

[332] _Description, Ant._ vol. iii. p. 44.

[333] MeRIMeE, _Dissertation sur l'Emploi des Couleurs_, p. 130.

The paintings are, as a rule, free from cracks. The colours seem to have been mixed with water and some flexible gum like tragacanth.[334]

M. Hector Leroux, who took impressions of many bas-reliefs during his visit to Egypt, is inclined to believe that the Egyptians sometimes mixed honey with their colours, as the makers of water-colours do now.

In some of the tombs the painting became sticky when he laid his moistened paper upon their surfaces. In others no amount of wetting affected the surface of the colours, which remained as smooth and hard as enamel. Some Egyptian paintings are covered with a resinous varnish which has blackened with time and spoilt the colours upon which it is laid.[335] The same varnish was used for the mummy cases and gives them the dark hue which they now present. A few exceptionally well preserved examples permit us to suppose that their colours when fresh must have been much lighter in tone and more brilliant than they now appear. No such precaution was taken, as a rule, in the case of the frescos. Their surfaces were left free from a substance that could so greatly alter with time, and thanks partly to this, partly to the equality of temperature and to the dryness and tranquillity of the air, they have retained an incomparable freshness. The centuries have pa.s.sed gently over them, but since all the world has taken to visiting Egypt, including even the foolish and ignorant, they have suffered greatly from the barbarity of tourists. Of this the state of those beautiful decorations in the tomb of Seti which have excited the admiration of all cultivated travellers, is a painful instance.

[334] MeRIMeE, _Dissertation_, etc. Champollion uses the term _gouache_, body colour, in speaking of these paintings, but as the characteristic of that process is that every tint is mixed with white, there is some inaccuracy in doing so.

[335] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, text, p. 291.

Several mummy masks are in existence which prove that encaustic painting, in which naphtha and wax were used, was employed by the Egyptians;[336] but this process does not seem to have been developed until after the Macedonian conquest. Speaking generally, we may say that the Egyptian method was _distemper_.

[336] PRISSE, _Histoire_, etc. text, p. 291.

The Egyptians produced easel pictures as well as wall paintings. In one of the Beni-Ha.s.san tombs two artists are represented painting animals upon a panel.[337] Herodotus tells us that Amasis presented his portrait to the people of Cyrene.[338] Supposing it to be the work of a native artist, we may form some idea of its character from the Egyptian portraits, dating from the Roman epoch, which are now in the Louvre. Doubtless the portrait of Amasis was very different in style from these productions of the decadence; but it is probable that, like them, it was painted upon a cedar panel.

[337] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc. vol. ii. p. 294.

[338] HERODOTUS, ii. 182.

We have no reason to believe that the Egyptians ever succeeded in crossing the line which separates illumination from painting. The convention which saw only single flat tones on every surface being once adopted, it was sometimes pushed to extraordinary lengths. Not content with ignoring the varieties of tone and tint which nature everywhere presents, the Egyptian artists sometimes adopted arbitrary hues which did not, even faintly, recall the actual colours of the objects upon which they were used. As a rule they represented the female skin as a light-yellow, and the male as a reddish-brown. This distinction may be understood. Besides its convenience as indicative of s.e.x to a distant observer, it answers to a difference which social habits have established in every civilized society. More completely covered than men and less in the open air, the women, at least those of the upper cla.s.ses, are less exposed to the effects of sun and wind than men. Their skins are usually fairer. In northern climates they are whiter, in southern less brown. We are surprised therefore to find that in the small temple at Ipsamboul the carnations of male and female, whether they be kings and queens or G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, are all alike of a vivid yellow, not far removed from chrome.[339] Those divinities who have the limbs and features of man, such as Amen, Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, should, we might think, be subject to the same rule as the images of men and women, and in most cases it is so.

But, on the other hand, the painter often endows them with skins of the most fanciful and arbitrary hue. At Ipsamboul there is an Amen with a blue skin,[340] and, again, an Amen and an Osiris which are both green.[341] At Philae we find numerous examples of the same singularity.[342] At Kalabche, in Nubia, there are royal figures coloured in the same fashion.[343]

[339] There are other exceptions to the ordinary rule. In a fine bas-relief in the Louvre, representing Seti I. before Hathor, the carnations of the G.o.ddess are similar to those of the Pharaoh; they are in each case dark red (bas.e.m.e.nt room, B, 7).

[340] CHAMPOLLION, _Monuments de l'egypte et de la Nubie_, pl.

11. Blue was the regular colour for Amen when represented with a complete human form; when he was ram-headed he was generally painted green (see CHAMPOLLION, _Pantheon egyptien_, No. 1; PIERRET, _Dictionnaire Archeologique_; and pl. 2, vol. i. of the present work).--ED.

[341] _Ibid._ pl. 59.

[342] _Ibid._ plates 71, 76, 78, 91.

[343] _Ibid._ pl. 154.

Exceptional though they may be, these curious representations help us to understand the Egyptian method of looking at colour. They did not employ it like the modern painter, in order to add to the illusion; they used it decoratively, partly to satisfy that innate love for polychromy which we have explained by the intensity of a southern sun, partly to give relief to their figures, which would stand out more boldly from the white ground when brilliant with colour than when they had to depend solely upon their slight relief. In the interior of the figure colour was used to distinguish the flesh from the draperies, and to indicate those enrichments in the latter which made up the elegance of the Egyptian costume. A good example of this way of using colour is seen in the tomb of Amenophis III., which contains the portrait of Queen Taia reproduced in our Fig. 264.[344]

[344] We place this portrait of Taia in our chapter on painting because its colour is exceptionally delicate and carefully managed (see PRISSE, text, p. 421). The original is, however, in very low relief, so low that it hardly affects the colour values.

We find, too, that in pictures in which people of different races are brought together, the artist employs different tones to mark their varied hues. In a tomb at Abd-el-Gournah, in which the construction of a building is represented, the workmen, who are doubtless slaves or prisoners of war, have not all skins of one colour; some are light yellow, some light red, while others are reddish-brown. We are led to believe that this is not merely the result of caprice on the part of the painter, by the fact that the men with the light yellow skin seem to have more hair on their chests and chins than the others. They come, no doubt, from northern lat.i.tudes, whose inhabitants are more hairy than the southerners.[345] The negroes are made absolutely black,[346] the Ethiopians very dark brown.[347]

[345] LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part iii. pl. 40, cf. pl. 116.