Egyptian sculpture

8 EGYPTIAN SCULPTURE

broadest aspect ; a group of animals is represented as walking or standing in a line, and a background is non-existent. This method gives good results up to a point, especially when the artist, like the Egyptian, has a marvellous power of seeing and reproducing the characteristic outline of an inanimate object or of an animal.

But to represent a human figure is a very different matter without a knowledge of foreshortening. If the figure is drawn full-face, how are the nose and feet to be shown? If it is in profile, the eyes and shoulders are an insuperable difficulty. The primitive artist, however, is like the child in not being deterred by difficulties. He wishes to show both legs and both feet, he therefore draws them in profile, one in advance of the other; both arms have to be shown, the body must therefore be drawn in front view, this being also the broadest aspect. The head is again in profile, but as the shape of the foreshortened eye did not impress itself on the mind of the artist, he drew it as if seen from the front. The attitude of a figure, with head and legs in profile and the trunk turned to the front, is frankly impossible anatomically, but it is found in all primitive art. Even the Greeks used the front-view eye in a profile face until the time of the Parthenon sculptures, while Cretan art shows all the primitive conventions as completely as the Egyptian. As a general tule, however, the work of the primitive artist is so vigorous that the impossible anatomy is hardly noticeable, the only effect being of a rather stiff conventionality.

By a conservative people like the Egyptians the conventions in art were preserved long after increased knowledge had_made many of them unnecessary. Here also religion stepped in, and insisted that the archaic was in accordance with the divine will. As all art was for religious purposes, the Egyptian artist had no choice but to comply, and only