The Egyptian artists produced first-rate work for close to 4,000 years.
The main reason for this extraordinary success will be found in their respect for tradition. They honored tradition in their paintings and sculpture just as they did in their daily life. It is therefore not difficult to understand why they were more interested in the type of person they were representing (be it royalty or the common man) in their drawings and statues than the individual.
When they were told to make a statue of the Pharaoh, for example, they naturally took into account those features that were characteristic of his face; however, such details as the shape of this eyebrows, the width of his chin and the length of his nose were relatively unimportant.
The main concern was to represent their ruler in such a way that everyone seeing the statue would exclaim: "No question about it. That is a king!". They would recognize qualities which they expected to find in their sovereign; that he should be someone above the concerns of everyday life, a person of this world but at the same time so identificable with his godlike predecessors as not to be in any way like the rest of mankind.
See the above for more details.
No comments:
Post a Comment