Volume I Part 9 (2/2)

The Greeks were clear-sighted enough to understand their own interests; they were too philosophical and large minded for any fanatical persecution of, or even hindrance to, the national religion; they were too much of connoisseurs to fail in respect to a forious antiquity they divined, and before which thethem were ever inclined to bow, like youths before an old s

Thus Egypt gradually fell into the hands of strangers after the commencement of the fourth century before Christ Ethiopians, assyrians and Persians had by turns overrun the country Great numbers of the Phnicians had established themselves in it, and, after the fall of Jerusalem and Samaria, many Jews followed their exah the breaches which their predecessors hadeverywhere felt the superiority of a people who had, by appropriating the useful results obtained in a long succession of centuries by er, and better instructed than any of their forerunners

Thus Egypt lost her power of national rejuvenation, her power of rising again after calah the centuries by mere force of habit, but she lived no eneous, and her institutions were so solid, that the social conditions of the country could not be changed in a day or even in a century The teachings of her religion had been established by so long a course of development, and the hands of her artists were so well practised, that the monumental types which had been created in more fertile periods of her history were reproduced until a late date, in a ination was dead, and the best that could be hoped for was the faithful repetition of those forenius of the race had conceived in its last ht

Under the Sait princes, under the Pseypt was delivered froain became mistress of Syria and of the Island of Cyprus She thus recovered confidence in herself and in her future, and a period ensued which had an art of its oith distinctive features which we shall endeavour to trace In the intervals of precarious repose which characterized the Persian doyptians had leisure neither to invent nor to improve They copied, as well as they could, the monuments of the twenty-sixth dynasty Art becaether and transmitted in the intercourse of the studio, by instruction and practice; it becareat technical skill, but displaying no sincere and personal feeling Nature was no longer studied or cared for Artists knew that the huure should be divided into so many parts They knew that in the representation of this or that God a certain attitude or attribute was necessary; and they carved the statues required of theyptian art became conventional, and so it remained to the end So it was in the time of Diodorus The sculptors who the reign of Augustus, carved a statue as a modern mechanic would make the different parts of a machine; they worked with a rapidity and an easy decision more characteristic of the precise worker necessary to them The due proportions and measurements had been ascertained and fixed many centuries before their time

[89] DIODORUS, i 98, 7, 8

[Illustration: FIG 51--Ouah-ab-ra, 26th dynasty Louvre Grey granite, height 37 inches]

But research must still precede discovery We adyptian art, but it could not have begun with convention any more than the arts of other nations We must here define the terms which we shall have occasion to employ Every work of art is an interpretation of nature Let us take the exale period and of a single people, it is always full of striking siinal artists never look at it with the sa out certain qualities, which another, although his contemporary and fellow-countryman, will leave in the obscurity of shadows One will devote himself to the beauty of form, another to the accidents of colour or the expression of passion and thought The original reh its interpretations are so various And these varieties become still more marked e compare the arts of different races or of different periods--the art of Egypt with that of assyria or Greece, antique art with that of reat resele time and country bear to each other, is accounted for by the fact that their creators look upon the external facts of life through a glass, if we enius

They bring to their study of an eternal model the same transient prejudices, the sahly gifted races where art holds or has held a lofty place, groups of artists are formed, either successively or siroups professes to make a fresh reference to nature, to interpret her works more faithfully than its predecessors, and to draw from them typical forms which shall be more expressive of the real desires and sentiments of the public for which it caters Between the works of these different schools, there are, however, many similarities, which are to be explained by the identity of race and belief There are also diversities which are caused either by different conditions or by the influence of so up, art lives, resses

But sooner or later comes a time when this ardour comes to an end, and exhaustion takes its place The civilization to which it belongs becouid, and its creative power ceases like the i of a flood Now, it often happens that just before this period of lassitude, in the last days of reproductive strength and healthy s up, which interprets the characteristic sentireatest vigour and by admirably selected means If such an interpretation be found satisfactory at all points, why should a better be sought for at the risk of choosing a worse?

This question is but a confession of impotence on the part of those who ask it From that moment convention will be supreme, and convention in the sense of an artificial set of rules which will release the artist froation of continual reference to nature

[Illustration: FIG 52--Sculptor at work upon an arm, Thebes

(Champollion, pl 180)]

Such a revolution is not the work of a day Art requires time thus to inclose itself in rows old, its art, like its literature, continually becoreat period or school leaves to the generations that come after it types which have oes on these types becoe increases until it becomes little less than tyranny Society can only escape froious or philosophical revolution, or by the infusion of new blood froes western civilization had to undergo in the early centuries of our era, in the establishment of Christianity, the invasion of the barbarians, and the fall of the Roman Empire

Thanks to the peculiar circuyptian society was enabled to enius and the vitality of its institutions with unusual success After each period of internal coyptians set themselves to renew the chain of their national traditions In spite of the foreign elereat mass of the people remained the saeneous constituents were absorbed by the nation without leaving any apparent trace The ideas which the people had formed for themselves of the ultimate destiny of hues varied slightly in general colour, but in none of their variations did they give rise to a new religion, as Brahave birth to Buddhiss succeeded in driving out the foreign conqueror and in re-establishi+ng the unity of the kingdom, so often was there a complete restoration The aim which they had in vieas ever to restore, in all its parts, a _regi a civilization which for ages had been alone in the world, it was in its full and glorious past that Egyptian society found the ideal to which it clung in spite of all obstacles and aze was turned backwards towards those early sovereigns who seeured by distance, but whose presence in the memory kept alive the perpetual worshi+p which had been vowed to the a statue, Thebes

(Champollion, pl 180)]

Every restoration is inspired by a more or less blind and superstitious reverence for the past This has often been asserted in connection with politics and religion, and the assertion is equally true in respect to art Each of those dynasties to which Egypt owed its political restoration, set themselves to repair the temples which had been destroyed, and to replace upon their pedestals the statues of Gods or ancestors which had been overthrown When new temples and new statues were to be erected, the first idea of the artists employed was to study the ancient ypt preserved her vitality, the wants of the present and external influences no doubt had their effect in introducing certain changes, both in the arrange, movement, and expression of the statues which adorned them Ancient types were not servilely copied, but the temptation to borrow from theression, was too strong to be resisted It was necessary that all buildings and statues should be in hares, and froan by ione before The 'school' in process of foundation accepted on trust the architectural disposition left by its predecessor, as well as itsthat, from its first ree

This conventionality must have increased at every fresh renascence, because each new development had its own processes to transmit to posterity as well as those of its ancestors After each recoil or pause in the progress of art, the weight of the past must have seemed heavier to those who attempted to revive the onward movement On the one hand, the more ancient of the traditional elements had acquired, by their constant and often repeated transe and authority which placed theacy of ad, until it became a source of embarrassment to the artist, and of destruction to his liberty When at last the decadence of the race had advanced so far that all initiative power and independence of thought had disappeared, the ti, like one of those elaborate rituals which regulate every word, and even gesture of the officiating priest When Plato visited Egypt, the schools of sculpture were nothingpupils, ere remarkable for docility and for dexterity of hand, to transe of precepts and receipts which provided for every contingency and left no room for the exercise of fancy or discretion

At that very ti with a power and rapidity which has never been rivalled To the school of Phidias, a school established in that Athens which yet possessed so many works of the archaic period, had succeeded those of Praxiteles and Scopas The Greeks found means to improve, or at least to innovate, upon perfection itself Plato did not, and could not, perceive, in his hasty journey through the Egyptian cities, that they too had seen their periods of change, their different schools and developments of style, less marked, perhaps, than those of Greece, and certainly less rapid, but yet quite perceptible to the practised observer We are now in a better position to estiht before our eyes such as Plato never saw; namely, the statues of the ancient ees in the thickness of walls or in the depths of sepulchral pits Even now these statues have not reached the age of ten thousand years so persistently attributed by the Greek philosopher to the early works which he did see, works which see h the statues of the early empire were then no more than so, if he had seen them at all, that they were quite distinct froress, always supposing that he looked at them with reasonable attention The art of the pyraree certain qualities for which the Egyptians have been too coh the excavations of Mariette and the contents of the Boulak museum But even before Cheops, Chefren, and their subjects had risen froy, and described by no very bold conjecture, the essential characteristics of Egyptian art during its first centuries Whether we speak of an individual, of a school, or of a people, every artistic career which follows its natural course and is not rudely broken through, ends sooner or later in conventionality, in that which is technically called _ of art Art always begins by humble and sincere attempts to render what it sees Its aardness is at first extreme and its power of ied; it tries different processes; it takes account now of one, now of another aspect of life; it consults nature incessantly and hu its work in obedience to their teaching

This teaching is not always rightly understood, but it is ever received with docility and good faith

[Illustration: FIG 54--Artist painting a statue, Thebes

(Champollion, pl 180)]

Every hich bears the ; but the ives birth to real _chefs d'uvre_ is towards the end of that period, when the eye has become sure, and the hand sufficiently well practised, for the faithful interpretation of any ht the fancy Success is then achieved, always provided that theshort of passionate devotion But the time comes when this devotion is relaxed The artist thinks that such constant reference to nature is no longer required when he has made his final choice between the differenthimself to the reproduction of certain features for which he has a marked preference, he has himself produced types which he thenceforward takes pleasure in repeating, as if they were in themselves an epitoypt, even those discoveries which carry us back farthest do not enable us to grasp, as we can in the case of Greece, the first attempts at plastic expression, the first rude efforts of the modeller or painter; but they carry us to the end of that period which, in the case of other countries, we call archaic; and above all they transport us into the centre of the epoch which was to Egypt what the fifth century was to Greece, nayptian people had already lived so long and worked so hard that they could not free their work from certain common and irrepressible characteristics In the plastic arts and in poetry they had their own style, and that style was both individual and original in an extraordinary degree This style was already formed, but it was not yet robbed of its vitality by indolent content or petrified by mannerism; it had neither renounced its freedom nor said its last word

[Illustration: FIG 55--Isis nursing Horus Ptoleht, 19 inches]