Volume II Part 27 (1/2)

To surmount the difficulty the theory of successive canons was started; some declared for two,[314] some for three[315] This theory requires explanation also Do its advocates le epoch there is a scale of proportion so constant that we ulation?

If, however, we doubt the evidence of our eyes and study the plates in Lepsius or the monuments in our museums, measure in hand, we shall see at once that no such theory will hold water Under the Ancient Eure and another As a rule they were short rather than tall; but while on the one hand we encounter certain for al 120, Vol I), we also find so 101, Vol I) The artists of Thebes adopted alike a rigorous uniforation of the lower part of the body is50, Vol

I) and in the paintings (Plate XII) than in statues of the natural size (Figs 211, 216) and in the colossi If there had been a canon in the proper sense of the term its authority would have applied as much to those statuettes and bas-reliefs as to the full-sized figures But, as a fact, the freedom of the artist is obvious; his conception is modified only by the reat statue in stone too slender below, as it would want base and solidity; but as soon as he was easy on that score he allowed hierate what seeraceful feature

[314] EBERS, _aegypten_, vol ii p 54 PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, text, pp 124-128

[315] LEPSIUS, _Ueber einige Kuntsformen_, p 9 BIRCH, in WILKINSON'S _Manners and Customs_, vol ii LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part ii pl 9, p 270, note 3

We see, then, that art in Egypt went through pretty es and develop and busy life Taste changed with the centuries It began by insisting on reat breadth of shoulder and thickset proportions generally In later years elegance became the chief object, and slenderness of proportion was sometimes pushed even to weakness In each of these periods all plastic figures naturally approached the type which happened to be in fashi+on, and in that sense alone is it just to assert that Egyptian art had two different and successive canons

The question as to whether the Egyptians ever adopted a unit of ure or not, is different Wilkinson and Lepsius thought they had discovered such a unit in the length of the foot, Prisse and Ch Blanc in that of thein the texts to support either theory, and an examination of the monuments themselves shows that sometimes one, sometimes the other of the two units, is most in accordance with their measurements Between the Ancient Ereatly that it is i the works of a single period we find some that may be divided exactly by one of the two; others which have a fraction too much or too little It has not yet been proved, therefore, that the Egyptians ever adopted such a rigorous systereatly practised design, they established certain relations between one part of their figures and another, relations which gradually became more constant as the national art lost its freedom and vitality; and they arrived at last at thetheths of the head, the nose, the foot, or the ht contain Their eyes were their compasses, and they worked--at least under the New E the Graeco-Roman period--from models which represented the experience of the past It is therefore unnecessary to search for an explanation of the uniforid mathematical system; we must be content to see in it the natural result of an artistic education into which, as the centuries succeeded one another, the imitation of previous types, and the application of traditional recipes entered ns traced within lines which cross each other at regular intervals, they can be nothing but drawings squared for transferring purposes _Squaring_ is the usual process eure in different di divided the latter by horizontal and perpendicular lines cutting each other at regular intervals, they go through the saure is to be transferred, inal, but the resulting squares larger if the copy is to be larger, syptian decorators often made use of this process for the transference of sketches upon papyrus, stone, or wood, to the wall Of this practice we give two examples The first is an elaborate composition in which several modifications and corrections of lines and attitudes ure (Fig 259) In each case the figures extend vertically over nineteen squares The first dates frohteenth, the second from the nineteenth dynasty[316]

[316] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_

[Illustration: FIG 258--Design transferred by squaring From Prisse]

The same device is sometimes made use of to transfer heads, and even animals, from a small sketch to the wall In the tomb of Amenophis III, in the Bab-el-Molouk, there is a fine portrait of a prince thus squared;[317] at Beni-Hassan we find a cow and an antelope treated in the same fashi+on[318]

[317] LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part iii pl 70

[318] _Ibid_ plate 152

Traces of another and yet ures in his bas-reliefs the artist sometimes marked in red on the walls the vertical and horizontal lines which would give the poise of the body, the height of the shoulders and are of the drawers The positions of secondary anatomical points were uide for the hand of the designer[319]

[319] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, text, p 123

LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, pl 65

The fact that these lines and squares are only found upon a ss and bas-reliefs does not prove that their employment was in any way exceptional It is probable that one of the two processes was generally used, but that the colour spread both upon figures and ground hides their traces The few pictures in which they are now to be traced were never completed

Most of the painters and sculptors to whom the decorations of tombs and temples were confided must have had recourse to these contrivances, but here and there were artists who had sufficient skill and self-confidence to make their sketches directly upon the wall itself More than one instance of this has been discovered in those Theban tombs whose decorations were left unfinished In a few cases the design has been made in red chalk by a journeyman and afterwards corrected, in black chalk, by the master[320]

[320] Upon the preparation of the bas-relief, see BELZONI, _Narrative of the Operations_, etc p 175

PRISSE gives several interesting exa others a fine portrait of Seti I (_Histoire_, etc vol ii)

Examples of these corrections are to be found in sculpture as well as in painting Our examination of the sculptures at Karnak showed that the artist did not always follow the first sketch traced in red ink, but that as the work progressed he uided, to so under his hands The western wall of the hypostyle hall contains many instances of this It is decorated with sculptures on a large scale, in which the lines traced by the chisel differ more or less from those of the sketch (_Description, Ant_ vol ii p 445)

[Illustration: FIG 259--Design transferred by squaring From Prisse]

As the bas-relief was thus preceded a sketch which was more or less liable to modification, it would seem probable that a similar custom obtained in the case of the statue It appears especially unlikely that those great figures in the harder rocks which represented such an enoruide which should preserve them froyptian sculptor begin, then, with a clay sketch? There is no positive information on the subject, but in all those numerous bas-reliefs which represent sculptors at work, there is not one in which the artist has before hiuide him in his task It is possible that the saranite or sandstone, enabled the Egyptian to dispense with an aid which the infinite variety of later schools was to render necessary

The Egyptian sculptor was contented with a few siain He doubtless began by hts of the different parts upon his block The rock was so hard that there was little risk of his journey them to be carefully overlooked Marble would have been far elo, when he worked the marble with his own hands, spoilt h we have no evidence to show that the Egyptians understood the use of clay models, we have some idea of the process by which they were enabled to do without them, and of the nature of their professional education The chief Egyptian raduated exercises in the technique of sculpture They are of lih The use of these little models is shown to have been almost universal by the fact that Mariette found them on nearly every ancient site that he excavated Their true character is beyond doubt[321] At Boulak there are twenty-seven sculptured slabs which were found at Tanis One is no un

By its side is a completed study of the same subjects Some of these slabs are carved on both sides; on others we find one motive treated twice, side by side, once in the state of first sketch, and again as a finished study The plaques which bear the heads of cynocephali, of lions and lionesses, are res 260, 261, and 262)[322] The same may be said of fifteen royal heads found at Sakkarah They should be exae[323] in order frohly-blocked-out sketch, to 637, a finished head One of these ive accent to the profile A few of them are squared in order to test the proportions But even here no canon of proportion is to be found ”If the squares were based upon so unit, they would be identical in every model in which they occur But in one of these heads we find three horizontal divisions between the uraeus and the chin; in another four In most cases the number of the squares seems to have been entirely due to the individual caprice or convenience of the artist There are but two examples in which another rule seems to have been followed; in them the proportions of the squares are identical, and their intersections fall upon the same points All that may be fairly deduced from this, however, is that they are the work of the same hands”[324] A second series of royal heads was found at Tanis; others have been discovered in the Fayoum Boulak also possesses s, hands, &c Upon a plaque froure of Isis appears twice, once as a sketch and once as a finished study

[321] MARIETTE, _Notice du Musee_, Nos 623-688

[322] Nos 652-654 of the _Notice du Musee_