DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0060
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
in the childish lack of expertness. A simplicity schooled but
not crushed by craftsmanship directs the chisel: a simplicity
which belongs not to the fifth dynasty, and not even to
Egypt alone, although the motifs naturally reflect the country
of the Nile. We catch a reflection of our own simplicity
when we were young and used to play with the round drum
which was open at the top and had long slits in the side and
was meant to spin round. You stuck strips of paper inside,
and when you spun the drum round the figures danced.
The strips were not half so beautiful as these, of course, and
there weren’t any hippopotamuses. We had jumping
soldiers in spiked helmets and generals on horseback. It is
a foolish thought; but there is something of our own child-
hood in the pleasure of contemplating the childhood of five
thousand years ago.
A couple of thick lines suddenly hold up the game. The
sharp arabesque of a mysterious man, tall and naked, the
master of the tomb. This is no child’s drawing. The com-
plete firmness of the outline dispels all recollections of our
childhood. The feelings it arouses in us are quite different.
Where have we felt such rhythms before? Surely there are
traces of this nobility in Piero della Francesca.
Such were the pictures that contributed to make the
tomb memorable. The mixture of nobility and childishness
must have turned their minds beyond the thought of death;
for it was full of poetry. It is strange how the unaccustomed
idea takes hold of us, how we divine in this art the easy ful-
filment of the simple wish to continue this life beyond the
grave. Possibly the delicacy of the balance was responsible
for it. A little more external reality, and the simplicity would
have seemed foolish; a little more style, and we should have
called it archaism. The striking thing about this sepulchral
art is its power of staying in the mind. The context, whose
circumstances we know, may very likely have contributed
tangible suggestions of an external and accidental kind; but
52
in the childish lack of expertness. A simplicity schooled but
not crushed by craftsmanship directs the chisel: a simplicity
which belongs not to the fifth dynasty, and not even to
Egypt alone, although the motifs naturally reflect the country
of the Nile. We catch a reflection of our own simplicity
when we were young and used to play with the round drum
which was open at the top and had long slits in the side and
was meant to spin round. You stuck strips of paper inside,
and when you spun the drum round the figures danced.
The strips were not half so beautiful as these, of course, and
there weren’t any hippopotamuses. We had jumping
soldiers in spiked helmets and generals on horseback. It is
a foolish thought; but there is something of our own child-
hood in the pleasure of contemplating the childhood of five
thousand years ago.
A couple of thick lines suddenly hold up the game. The
sharp arabesque of a mysterious man, tall and naked, the
master of the tomb. This is no child’s drawing. The com-
plete firmness of the outline dispels all recollections of our
childhood. The feelings it arouses in us are quite different.
Where have we felt such rhythms before? Surely there are
traces of this nobility in Piero della Francesca.
Such were the pictures that contributed to make the
tomb memorable. The mixture of nobility and childishness
must have turned their minds beyond the thought of death;
for it was full of poetry. It is strange how the unaccustomed
idea takes hold of us, how we divine in this art the easy ful-
filment of the simple wish to continue this life beyond the
grave. Possibly the delicacy of the balance was responsible
for it. A little more external reality, and the simplicity would
have seemed foolish; a little more style, and we should have
called it archaism. The striking thing about this sepulchral
art is its power of staying in the mind. The context, whose
circumstances we know, may very likely have contributed
tangible suggestions of an external and accidental kind; but
52