고대 이집트 예술의 목적과 시대적 특성

The Purposes and Characteristics of the Ancient Egyptian Arts

In order to understand Ancient Egyptian Pharaonic Arts it is necessary to know the religious significance, the functions and contexts of the arts. The Egyptians did not develope sculpture in which the body turned and twisted through space, like classical Greek statuary. They did not discover the rules of geometric perspective ad Western artists did in the Renaissance. That is because they put the special purposes on the works they produced. In the most three-dimensional representations they face straight ahead. Frontality is directly related to the functions of Egyptian statuary and the contexts in which statues were set up. The convention of relative size was also followed from the earliest times: the most important figure in any scene was always shown larger than the rest. This tradition was often followed by portraying husbands and wives besides the kings and servants. In Ancient Egyptian Arts men are usually shown striding forward on to the left foot, their hands at their sides, while women stand with their feet together or slightly apart. Ancient traditions were also followed in coloring statues and reliefs carved in wood and limestones, which were usually brightly colored in their finished states. The skin of men was always painted brown or reddish brown, in contrast to the yellow or light pink used for the skin of royal and noble ladies. Statues were usually made of stone, wood, or metal. The stone between the arms and the body, and between the legs in standing figures or the legs and the seat in seated ones, was not normally cut away. The Egyptian artists made the objects from their most characteristic and easily recognized aspect, usually in profile, full view, plan or elevation. The rendering of the human figure in a two dimensional surface forms composite built up from its individual parts. The two feet are made identically from the inside, showing the big toe and the arch up until the later Eighteenth Dynasty.