Читать книгу The Art in Ancient Egypt - Perrot Georges - Страница 24

Fig. 51.—Ouah-ab-ra, 26th dynasty. Louvre. Grey granite, height 37 inches.

But research must still precede discovery. We admit that a day arrived when convention was supreme in Egyptian art, but it could not have begun with convention any more than the arts of other nations. We must here define the terms which we shall have occasion to employ. Every work of art is an interpretation of nature. Let us take the example of the human figure. In the works of a single period and of a single people, it is always full of striking similarity; and yet two original artists never look at it with the same eyes. One will look at it in certain aspects and will bring out certain qualities, which another, although his contemporary and fellow-countryman, will leave in the obscurity of shadows. One will devote himself to the beauty of form, another to the accidents of colour or the expression of passion and thought. The original remains the same, although its interpretations are so various. And these varieties become still more marked when we compare the arts of different races or of different periods—the art of Egypt with that of Assyria or Greece, antique art with that of modern times.

On the other hand, the great resemblance which the arts of a single time and country bear to each other, is accounted for by the fact that their creators look upon the external facts of life through a glass, if we may put it so, tinted with the colours of the national genius. They bring to their study of an eternal model the same transient prejudices, the same preoccupations, the same desires. And yet among those highly gifted races where art holds or has held a lofty place, groups of artists are formed, either successively or simultaneously, which we call schools. Each of these groups professes to make a fresh reference to nature, to interpret her works more faithfully than its predecessors, and to draw from them typical forms which shall be more expressive of the real desires and sentiments of the public for which it caters. Between the works of these different schools, there are, however, many similarities, which are to be explained by the identity of race and belief. There are also diversities which are caused either by different conditions or by the influence of some master spirit. Wherever these schools spring up, art lives, moves, and progresses. But sooner or later comes a time when this ardour comes to an end, and exhaustion takes its place. The civilization to which it belongs becomes old and languid, and its creative power ceases like the imperceptible sinking of a flood. Now, it often happens that just before this period of lassitude, in the last days of reproductive strength and healthy maturity, a rich and brilliant school springs up, which interprets the characteristic sentiments of the civilization to which it belongs, with the greatest vigour and by admirably selected means. If such an interpretation be found satisfactory at all points, why should a better be sought for at the risk of choosing a worse? This question is but a confession of impotence on the part of those who ask it. From that moment convention will be supreme, and convention in the sense of an artificial set of rules which will release the artist from his obligation of continual reference to nature.

Fig. 52.—Sculptor at work upon an arm, Thebes. (Champollion, pl. 180.)

Such a revolution is not the work of a day. Art requires time thus to inclose itself in mere mechanical dexterity. As a nation grows old, its art, like its literature, continually becomes more and more conventional. Every great period or school leaves to the generations that come after it types which have made a vivid impression upon taste and imagination. As time goes on these types become more numerous and more brilliant, and their prestige increases until it becomes little less than tyranny. Society can only escape from its thrall at the expense of some great religious or philosophical revolution, or by the infusion of new blood from without. And these changes western civilization had to undergo in the early centuries of our era, in the establishment of Christianity, the invasion of the barbarians, and the fall of the Roman Empire.

Thanks to the peculiar circumstances of the country, Egyptian society was enabled to maintain the originality of its genius and the vitality of its institutions with unusual success. After each period of internal commotion or foreign invasion, the Egyptians set themselves to renew the chain of their national traditions. In spite of the foreign elements which had been received among them, the great mass of the people remained the same down to the latest days of antiquity. Heterogeneous constituents were absorbed by the nation without leaving any apparent trace. The ideas which the people had formed for themselves of the ultimate destiny of humanity were developed, indeed, and in successive ages varied slightly in general colour, but in none of their variations did they give rise to a new religion, as Brahmanism gave birth to Buddhism.

As often as a new dynasty of kings succeeded in driving out the foreign conqueror and in re-establishing the unity of the kingdom, so often was there a complete restoration. The aim which they had in view was ever to restore, in all its parts, a régime which was founded upon national pride. Enjoying a civilization which for ages had been alone in the world, it was in its full and glorious past that Egyptian society found the ideal to which it clung in spite of all obstacles and misfortunes. Its gaze was turned backwards towards those early sovereigns who seemed transfigured by distance, but whose presence in the memory kept alive the perpetual worship which had been vowed to them.

Fig. 53.—Sculptor carving a statue, Thebes. (Champollion, pl. 180.)

Every restoration is inspired by a more or less blind and superstitious reverence for the past. This has often been asserted in connection with politics and religion, and the assertion is equally true in respect to art. Each of those dynasties to which Egypt owed its political restoration, set themselves to repair the temples which had been destroyed, and to replace upon their pedestals the statues of gods or ancestors which had been overthrown. When new temples and new statues were to be erected, the first idea of the artists employed was to study the ancient monuments and to try to equal them. As long as Egypt preserved her vitality, the wants of the present and external influences no doubt had their effect in introducing certain changes, both in the arrangement of her buildings, and in the modelling, movement, and expression of the statues which adorned them. Ancient types were not servilely copied, but the temptation to borrow from them a point of departure, at least, for new attempts at progression, was too strong to be resisted. It was necessary that all buildings and statues should be in harmony with the remains which subsisted from previous ages, and from this it resulted that each new creative effort began by imitating what had gone before. The 'school' in process of foundation accepted on trust the architectural disposition left by its predecessor, as well as its methods of looking at nature. And this is equivalent to saying that, from its first moment, it must have been conventional in a certain degree.

This conventionality must have increased at every fresh renascence, because each new development had its own processes to transmit to posterity as well as those of its ancestors. After each recoil or pause in the progress of art, the weight of the past must have seemed heavier to those who attempted to revive the onward movement. On the one hand, the more ancient of the traditional elements had acquired, by their constant and often repeated transmission, a prestige and authority which placed them above discussion; on the other, the legacy of admitted principles and processes was continually increasing, until it became a source of embarrassment to the artist, and of destruction to his liberty. When at last the decadence of the race had advanced so far that all initiative power and independence of thought had disappeared, the time arrived when convention was everything, like one of those elaborate rituals which regulate every word, and even gesture of the officiating priest. When Plato visited Egypt, the schools of sculpture were nothing more than institutions for teaching pupils, who were remarkable for docility and for dexterity of hand, to transmit to their successors an assemblage of precepts and receipts which provided for every contingency and left no room for the exercise of fancy or discretion.

At that very time Greek art was progressing with a power and rapidity which has never been rivalled. To the school of Phidias, a school established in that Athens which yet possessed so many works of the archaic period, had succeeded those of Praxiteles and Scopas. The Greeks found means to improve, or at least to innovate, upon perfection itself. Plato did not, and could not, perceive, in his hasty journey through the Egyptian cities, that they too had seen their periods of change, their different schools and developments of style, less marked, perhaps, than those of Greece, and certainly less rapid, but yet quite perceptible to the practised observer. We are now in a better position to estimate these differences. Monuments have been brought before our eyes such as Plato never saw; namely, the statues of the ancient empire which were hidden for so many ages in the thickness of walls or in the depths of sepulchral pits. Even now these statues have not reached the age of ten thousand years so persistently attributed by the Greek philosopher to the early works which he did see, works which seemed to him exactly the same as those which were being made in his presence. But although the statues of the early empire were then no more than some thirty centuries old, Plato could not have helped seeing, if he had seen them at all, that they were quite distinct from the works which the sculptors of Nectanebo had in progress, always supposing that he looked at them with reasonable attention. The art of the pyramid builders, an art which possesses in a very high degree certain qualities for which the Egyptians have been too commonly refused credit, is known to us chiefly through the excavations of Mariette and the contents of the Boulak museum. But even before Cheops, Chefren, and their subjects had risen from their tombs, the historian might have divined by analogy, and described by no very bold conjecture, the essential characteristics of Egyptian art during its first centuries. Whether we speak of an individual, of a school, or of a people, every artistic career which follows its natural course and is not rudely broken through, ends sooner or later in conventionality, in that which is technically called mannerism. But mannerism is never the beginning of art. Art always begins by humble and sincere attempts to render what it sees. Its awkwardness is at first extreme and its power of imitation very imperfect. But it is not discouraged; it tries different processes; it takes account now of one, now of another aspect of life; it consults nature incessantly and humbly, taking note of her answers and modifying its work in obedience to their teaching. This teaching is not always rightly understood, but it is ever received with docility and good faith.

Fig. 54.—Artist painting a statue, Thebes. (Champollion, pl. 180.)

Every work which bears the marks of frank and loyal effort is interesting; but the moment in an artistic career which gives birth to real chefs d'œuvre is towards the end of that period, when the eye has become sure, and the hand sufficiently well practised, for the faithful interpretation of any model whose beauty or original expression may have caught the fancy. Success is then achieved, always provided that the model is never lost sight of or studied with anything short of passionate devotion. But the time comes when this devotion is relaxed. The artist thinks that such constant reference to nature is no longer required when he has made his final choice between the different methods which his art employs. In devoting himself to the reproduction of certain features for which he has a marked preference, he has himself produced types which he thenceforward takes pleasure in repeating, as if they were in themselves an epitome of nature's infinite diversity.

In the case of Egypt, even those discoveries which carry us back farthest do not enable us to grasp, as we can in the case of Greece, the first attempts at plastic expression, the first rude efforts of the modeller or painter; but they carry us to the end of that period which, in the case of other countries, we call archaic; and above all they transport us into the centre of the epoch which was to Egypt what the fifth century was to Greece, namely, the age of perfection. The Egyptian people had already lived so long and worked so hard that they could not free their work from certain common and irrepressible characteristics. In the plastic arts and in poetry they had their own style, and that style was both individual and original in an extraordinary degree. This style was already formed, but it was not yet robbed of its vitality by indolent content or petrified by mannerism; it had neither renounced its freedom nor said its last word.

Fig. 55.—Isis nursing Horus. Ptolemaic bronze; in the Louvre. Height, 19 inches.