Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/222

194 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. are covered with a pair of drawers, whose white colour contrasts with the brownish red of the carnations. The breadth and truth with which the knee-joints are indicated should be remarked. The only details that have, to a certain extent, been " scamped," are the feet. Trusting to their being- half hidden by the folded legs, the sculptor has left them in a very rudimentary condition. The eyes form the most striking feature in this figure. " They consist of an iris of rock crystal surrounding a metal pupil, and set in an eyeball of opaque white quartz. The whole is framed in continuous eyelids of bronze." ^ This clever contrivance gives singular vitality and animation to the face. Even the Grecian sculptor never produced anything so vivacious. The latter, indeed began by renouncing all attempts to imitate the depth and brilliancy of the human eye. His point of departure differed entirely from that of his Memphite predecessor; his conception of his art led him, where the Egyptian would have used colour, to be content with the o^eneral characteristics of form and with its elevation to the highest pitch of nobility of which it was capable. This is not the place for a comparison of the two systems, but accepting the principles of art which prevailed in early Egypt, we must do justice to those masters who were contemporary with the Pyramids. It must be acknowledged that they produced works which are not to be surpassed in their way by the greatest portraits of modern Europe. In later years the Egyptian sculptor ceased to paint the eyes. Even in the time of the Ancient Empire the Egyptian custom in this particular was the same as the Greek, so far as statues in hard stone were concerned. The great statue of Chephren is an instance. In it the chisel has merely reproduced the contours of the eyelids and the salience of the eyeball. No attempt has been made to imitate the iris or to give brightness to the pupil. In none of the royal statues that have come down to our time do we find any effort to produce this kind of illusion, either by the use of paint or by the insertion of naturally coloured substances. There is a statue at Roulak which may, perhaps, be preferred even to the scribe of the Louvre. We have already alluded to it as the Shcik-el-Bclcd (Fig. 7, Vol. I.). In its present state (it is without either feet or base) it has no inscription but it is sometimes called Ra-em-ke, because that was the name of the ^ 1)e RouciE, Notice soiiimairc des Moiuaiicnts hli^xpticus^ 1865, p. 68.