DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5538#0090
PLOUGHING SCENE.
III.
PORTRAIT-PAINTING IN ANCIENT EGYPT.
The oldest sculptures and the oldest paintings which have
come down to our time are the work of ancient Egyptian ar-
tists who lived some four thousand years before the Christian
era. This would look as though sculpture and painting were
twins—twins born of the fruitful Nile, and therefore of par-
allel antiquity. But the art of painting implies first the art
of drawing; and the art of drawing is infinitely more ancient
than that of sculpture. It is more ancient than the imme-
morial civilization of Egypt. It is almost as old as man him-
self.
The child by the sea-shore tracing rude figures of men and
animals upon the wet sands, and the cave-dweller in the ages
before history outlining the forms of the mammoth and the
mastodon on a fragment of polished bone, are obeying the
same imitative bent, and that imitative bent is due to one of
the primary instincts of our race. An incised outline upon
bone is not sculpture. It is drawing—drawing with a point.
It precedes the attempt to model in clay, or to carve images
in wood or stone. In a word, it is the earliest form of fine
art in the world.
Erom the prehistoric cave-dweller we pass at one step to
III.
PORTRAIT-PAINTING IN ANCIENT EGYPT.
The oldest sculptures and the oldest paintings which have
come down to our time are the work of ancient Egyptian ar-
tists who lived some four thousand years before the Christian
era. This would look as though sculpture and painting were
twins—twins born of the fruitful Nile, and therefore of par-
allel antiquity. But the art of painting implies first the art
of drawing; and the art of drawing is infinitely more ancient
than that of sculpture. It is more ancient than the imme-
morial civilization of Egypt. It is almost as old as man him-
self.
The child by the sea-shore tracing rude figures of men and
animals upon the wet sands, and the cave-dweller in the ages
before history outlining the forms of the mammoth and the
mastodon on a fragment of polished bone, are obeying the
same imitative bent, and that imitative bent is due to one of
the primary instincts of our race. An incised outline upon
bone is not sculpture. It is drawing—drawing with a point.
It precedes the attempt to model in clay, or to carve images
in wood or stone. In a word, it is the earliest form of fine
art in the world.
Erom the prehistoric cave-dweller we pass at one step to