Egyptian Painting & Low Relief Carving

Kevin J. Benoy

Egyptian Painting & Low Relief Carving

• Much of what survives is temple or funerary art.

• Wall paintings in tombs were often instruction manuals for the dead, to assist them in passing to the afterlife.

Egyptian Painting & Low Relief Sculpture

• Painting and low-relief carving follow exactly the same style, the latter being merely a carved version of the former.

• Most low-relief carvings were also painted.

The System

• Paintings are divided into registers or bands.

• A ground line is generally present.– This could be vertical

or horizontal.

The System

• Paintings usually convey a story; they do not capture a particular movement as modern western art tends to to.

• This multi-moment art is not unlike medieval European art.

The System• Only three views are possible:

– Side– Front– Top

• Side and front were combined in the same image. Eye and shoulders are frontal, with head and legs in profile – all in the same image.

• No attempt is made to portray three dimensionality

• Men are coloured reddish and women, yellowish.

• Colours are flat and not blended.

The System

• Pharaohs are shown with great dignity.

• They seem not to exert themselves, even when engaged in dramatic activities.

The System

• Egyptian painting was hieratichieratic – which means that people were scaled according to importance.

• Pharaohs are shown larger than other beings, followed in importance by high priests, nobles, then others.

The System

• Lesser beings can be depicted with greater naturalism.

The System

• Women are shown more lifelike than men – with more movement apparent.

The System

Proportions follow rigid rules – and continued to do so throughout most of the 3000 year history of Ancient Egypt.

The System

• The Canon of Human proportions was a square-grid of 18 units applied to a drawn human figure (standing) allowing its reproduction in various sizes, but always anatomically proportionate. – There were 2 squares allowed for the face (from

the hairline to the base of the neck), 10 squares from the neck to the knees, and 6 squares from the knees to the sole of the feet. There was a nineteenth square used for the hair, but it was not counted with the rest of the body.

– A sitting figure was divided into a 14 square-grid (15 including the hair).

From Egyptvoyager.com

The Amarna Period

• In the dramatic Amarna Period – the time of Akhanaton (Amenhotep IV), a religious and artistic revolution swept through Egypt.

The Amarna Period

• Fluid lines replaced the hard geometry of traditional painting and low-relief carving.

The Amarna Period

• The standard geometry of traditional art was also changed:– The canonical grid of 18

units was replaced by one of 20.

– 2 squares were added between neck and knee.

• Though orthodoxy was restored after Akhenaton’s death, some of the fluidity remained in later work.

The Amarna Period

• While the Amarna style survived Akhenaton in its less dramatic forms, his religion did not.

• The boy-king, Tutankhamen, returned Egypt to religious orthodoxy and artistic orthodoxy reasserted itself.

                                                   

            

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