DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.803#0097
SCULPTURE. 91
Etruscan manner. The Persians appear to have
had no knowledge of the naked form; and, as
fire-worshippers, they are said to have condemned
all statues and images whatever representing the
deity.
Of Egyptian art, painting, architecture, and sculp-
ture, enough remains to enable us to form a pretty
accurate estimate, both with respect to the taste in
design, and the mechanical skill possessed by the
nation.
Winkelman, the abbale Pea, and Millin have
attempted to class Egyptian sculpture into periods
or epochs; Winkelman into three, Fea and Millin
into five periods. Winkelman's notions seem most
consonant to probability. He makes the first in-
clude the time which elapsed from the origin of the
Egyptians to the reign of Cambyses, in the sixty-
second Olympiad, or five hundred and twenty-six
years before Christ: this he calls the antient epoch.
The middle he makes to embrace the period during
which Egypt was under the dominion of the Persians
and Greeks; and the third or last, which he terms
the style of imitation, about the time of Hadrian.
Subsequent to this, Winkelman extended the first
°f his periods to the establishment of the Greeks
under Alexander the Great and his successors. The
student who examines Egyptian sculpture with at-
tention, will probably acquiesce in this last division.
Plato, who flourished about a hundred and thirty
years after Cambyses, in his Dialogue ' de Legibus,'
expressly states, that in painting and the other
"nitative arts the Egyptians had made no change;
their productions were neither more beautiful nor
worse than in the.remotest ages*. This passage is
* Platonis Opera. De Leg. lib. ii. edit. Steph. torn. ii. p. 656,
"•e. Plato's words are, " If you observe, therefore, you will .
Etruscan manner. The Persians appear to have
had no knowledge of the naked form; and, as
fire-worshippers, they are said to have condemned
all statues and images whatever representing the
deity.
Of Egyptian art, painting, architecture, and sculp-
ture, enough remains to enable us to form a pretty
accurate estimate, both with respect to the taste in
design, and the mechanical skill possessed by the
nation.
Winkelman, the abbale Pea, and Millin have
attempted to class Egyptian sculpture into periods
or epochs; Winkelman into three, Fea and Millin
into five periods. Winkelman's notions seem most
consonant to probability. He makes the first in-
clude the time which elapsed from the origin of the
Egyptians to the reign of Cambyses, in the sixty-
second Olympiad, or five hundred and twenty-six
years before Christ: this he calls the antient epoch.
The middle he makes to embrace the period during
which Egypt was under the dominion of the Persians
and Greeks; and the third or last, which he terms
the style of imitation, about the time of Hadrian.
Subsequent to this, Winkelman extended the first
°f his periods to the establishment of the Greeks
under Alexander the Great and his successors. The
student who examines Egyptian sculpture with at-
tention, will probably acquiesce in this last division.
Plato, who flourished about a hundred and thirty
years after Cambyses, in his Dialogue ' de Legibus,'
expressly states, that in painting and the other
"nitative arts the Egyptians had made no change;
their productions were neither more beautiful nor
worse than in the.remotest ages*. This passage is
* Platonis Opera. De Leg. lib. ii. edit. Steph. torn. ii. p. 656,
"•e. Plato's words are, " If you observe, therefore, you will .