Egyptian sculpture

74 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

of three each, led by one bird with his beak to the ground, feeding. The first thing which strikes the modern spectator is that the birds are moving away from the centre, dispersing the interest instead of concentrating it, as would have been the case had they been moving inwards. This division of the geese is probably due to the position of the fresco in the scheme of decoration. Besides the absolute division into two groups which have no connection with one another, the painting shows several of the characteristics of primitive art. There is no real grouping of the birds, each one is a single entity; there is practically no action and there is no background, the little tufts of grass and herbage only serve to fill up blank spaces. These blemishes are, however, only the faults of the period in which the artist lived—his genius was his own. The creatures are brilliantly drawn, the feeding birds more particularly so. The raised back, the twisted curve of the neck, the open beak, are clearly studied from nature, and it is equally clear that the painter was a lover of nature. No one without a sincere delight in the forms and coloration of living creatures could have portrayed the geese of Nefer-maat. The reason for their being represented in painting rather than in relief sculpture is that it was only in painting that the detail and colour of the feathering could be adequately given. The birds are so carefully rendered that the two species are quite recognisable, the colour and form of each kind are scrupulously differentiated, with extraordinarily good results. The plants are also rendered naturalistically; they are not the merely conventional flowers and herbage of the later periods; even the artists of the Old Kingdom, great as they undoubtedly were, never equalled the painter whom Nefer-maat employed to paint the birds of his farmyard. The fresco depends so much on its colouring that it loses immensely by being reproduced in black and white,