Volume II Part 28 (2/2)

FRAGMENT OF A FUNERARY PAINTING ON PLASTER

(XVIIIth Dynasty)]

In the Theban toures are first drawn and then painted upon a fine coat which has all the polish of stucco It seelue It is still white where no tint has been laid upon it; here and there its shi+ning 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 beca in soree transparent[333]

[332] _Description, Ant_ vol iii p 44

[333] MeRIMeE, _Dissertation sur l'Es are, as a rule, free from cracks The colours seeuacanth[334]

M Hector Leroux, who took iypt, is inclined to believe that the Egyptians sometimes mixed honey with their colours, as the makers of water-colours do now

In so became sticky when he laid his moistened paper upon their surfaces In others no a affected the surface of the colours, which res are covered with a resinous varnish which has blackened with time and spoilt the colours upon which it is laid[335] The saives them the dark hue which they now present A few exceptionally well preserved examples permit us to suppose that their colours when fresh hter 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 froreatly 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 incoently over theypt, 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 Cha of these paintings, but as the characteristic of that process is that every tint isso

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

Several mu, in which naphtha and ere used, was eyptians;[336] but this process does not seem to have been developed until after the Macedonian conquest Speaking generally, we yptian 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-Hassan to 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 yptian 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 illule flat tones on every surface being once adopted, it was sonoring 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 feht-yellow, and the male as a reddish-brown This distinction may be understood Besides its convenience as indicative of sex 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 classes, 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 Ipsas and queens or Gods and Goddesses, are all alike of a vivid yellow, not far removed from chrome[339] Those divinities who have the limbs and features of ht think, be subject to the saes 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 Ipsaain, an Areen[341] At Philae we find nuularity[342] At Kalabche, in Nubia, there are royal figures coloured in the same fashi+on[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 Goddess are similar to those of the Pharaoh; they are in each case dark red (basement rooypte et de la Nubie_, pl

11 Blue was the regular colour for Amen when represented with a coenerally 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 Egyptianat 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 round 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 enrichyptian costu 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 inal 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 to is represented, the workmen, who are doubtless slaves or prisoners of war, have not all skins of one colour; soht 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 ht yellow skin seem to have more hair on their chests and chins than the others They come, no doubt, from northern latitudes, whose inhabitants are roes are made absolutely black,[346] the Ethiopians very dark brown[347]

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