DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5538#0129
PORTRAIT-TAINTING IN ANCIENT EGYPT.
109
were, of course, done from the life; if the latter, is it pos-
sible that they were painted after death '.
These are questions which have been discussed bv several
competent authorities, but which, from their nature, cannot
be satisfactorily settled. The
fact that one framed portrait was .^mm^^—
found laid up against the mum-
my-case in the grave, and that
the cord by which it had once
been suspended was yet knotted
round the transverse bars at the
corners of that frame, gives con-
clusive proof that the people of
this town loved portraiture for
itself, and hung their portraits
in their rooms, as we do now.
Such portraits, as a rule, would
probably be copied on smaller
panels for funerary purposes,
and this would account for their
bright and life-like expression.
Where no previous portrait ex-
isted, it may reasonably be sup-
posed that an artist would be
summoned, and a sketchy like-
ness would be hastily painted on a panel of the required
size, immediately after death. If we compare the heads
reproduced in these pages, it is not difficult to conjecture
which are studies from the life, and which are studies after
death. Some of the least expressive faces may verv possi-
bly owe their passive vacuity to the fact that "life and
thought had gone away" before the artist came with his
saucers of powdered colors, his reed - brushes, and his pot
of melted beeswax, to transfer their pallid features to that
narrow panel which was destined to adorn the mummv-case
when the prescribed seventy days of embalmment should
have expired. In these portraits, and some others, the eyes
YOUNG I.ADT IX ITRPI.E CHITON.
109
were, of course, done from the life; if the latter, is it pos-
sible that they were painted after death '.
These are questions which have been discussed bv several
competent authorities, but which, from their nature, cannot
be satisfactorily settled. The
fact that one framed portrait was .^mm^^—
found laid up against the mum-
my-case in the grave, and that
the cord by which it had once
been suspended was yet knotted
round the transverse bars at the
corners of that frame, gives con-
clusive proof that the people of
this town loved portraiture for
itself, and hung their portraits
in their rooms, as we do now.
Such portraits, as a rule, would
probably be copied on smaller
panels for funerary purposes,
and this would account for their
bright and life-like expression.
Where no previous portrait ex-
isted, it may reasonably be sup-
posed that an artist would be
summoned, and a sketchy like-
ness would be hastily painted on a panel of the required
size, immediately after death. If we compare the heads
reproduced in these pages, it is not difficult to conjecture
which are studies from the life, and which are studies after
death. Some of the least expressive faces may verv possi-
bly owe their passive vacuity to the fact that "life and
thought had gone away" before the artist came with his
saucers of powdered colors, his reed - brushes, and his pot
of melted beeswax, to transfer their pallid features to that
narrow panel which was destined to adorn the mummv-case
when the prescribed seventy days of embalmment should
have expired. In these portraits, and some others, the eyes
YOUNG I.ADT IX ITRPI.E CHITON.