Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/348

3i8 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. To surmount the difficulty the theory of successive canons was started ; some declared for two,^ some for three.^ This theory requires explanation also. Do its advocates mean that in all the figures of a single epoch there is a scale of proportion so constant that we must seek for its cause in an external peremptory regu- lation ? If, however, we doubt the evidence of our eyes and study the plates in Lepsius or the monuments in our museums, measure in hand, we shall see at once that no such theory will hold water. Under the Ancient Empire proportions varied appre- ciably between one figure and another. As a rule they were short rather than tall ; but while on the one hand we encounter certain forms of very squat proportions, amounting almost to deformity (Fig. 1 20, Vol. I.), we also find some whose forms are very lengthy (Fig. loi. Vol. I.). The artists of Thebes adopted a more slender type, but with them too we find nothing like a rigorous uniformity. Again, the elongation of the lower part of the body is much more strongly marked in the funerary statuettes (Fig. 50, Vol. I.) and in the paintings (Plate XII.) than in statues of the natural size (Figs. 21 1, 216) and in the colossi. If there had been a canon in the proper sense of the term its authority would have applied as much to those statuettes and bas-reliefs as to the full-sized figures. But, as a fact, the freedom of the artist is obvious ; his conception is modified only by the material in which he worked. He could not make a great statue in stone too slender below, as it would want base and solidity ; but as soon as he was easy on that score he allowed himself to be carried away by the temptation to exaggerate what seemed to him an especially graceful feature. We see, then, that art in Egypt went through pretty much the same changes and developments as in other countries in which it enjoyed a long and busy life. Taste changed with the centuries. It began by insisting on muscular vigour, as displayed in great breadth of shoulder and thickset proportions generally. In later years elegance became the chief object, and slenderness of pro- portion was sometimes pushed even to weakness. In each of these periods all plastic figures naturally approached the type which happened to be in fashion, and in that sense alone is it 1 Ebers, Algyptejt^ vol. ii. p. 54. Prisse, Histoire de VA^-t Egvptien, text, pp. 124-128. 2 Lepsius, Ueher einige Kuntsformen^ '^. ^. Birch, in Wilkinson's J/rt';/w^^fl'«i Custo7ns, vol, ii. Lepsius, Denk?nceler, part ii. pi. 9, p. 270, note 3.