DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0152
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
beauty and their grace; it is the goal which turned their work
into a countenance divorced from a body. Relics of the old
exaltation survive in this head. Zoser might have had eyes
like these. The mouth, similarly shaped, is eloquently silent.
Zoser is greater, for less depends on his head alone. In Zoser
the world is still entire; no revolution has splintered it and
no renaissance is needed to sustain it. In the granite head,
we detect the animation of a portrait by Donatello; it re-
appears in many heads of the Middle Kingdom and bridles
their form. The Donatellesque quality does not hinder the re-
morseless psychology of their maker which waited andwatched
and forced the visual impression upon the clay. Granite
turns to wax, it seems, under the master’s hand, yet remains
a hard stone. Analysis results in a synthesis as hard as rock.
There is something of Rodin in the modelling: the Rodin
of the noblest portraits, not of the Balzac: the Rodin who
left Donatello with his outline and who filled the outline with
nervous force. The Sesostris head is greater, for the artist
relied less on nerves alone; he thought in stone. When we
use stone, we cannot get beyond simple reproduction;
curiously enough, the comparison with Rodin does not
detract from the Sesostris, for the thought bridges them
naturally. It is not so firm a plank as that which united our
Family with Corot, though it comes closer to us.
There are many good heads dating from the Middle
Kingdom, and not only in the Cairo Museum. I remember
an equally expressive obsidian head. They did not often
reach such heights, but even the transitional things captivate
us. So much at this period is transitional. In the corridor
there is a fragment of a colossal granite statue, here oddly
ascribed to the third dynasty, though actually dating from
the Middle Kingdom at the earliest; it is a mighty head
adorned with every sort of emblem, and set on mighty
shoulders. Its expressiveness triumphs over the trophy-like
splendour of ornament.
136
beauty and their grace; it is the goal which turned their work
into a countenance divorced from a body. Relics of the old
exaltation survive in this head. Zoser might have had eyes
like these. The mouth, similarly shaped, is eloquently silent.
Zoser is greater, for less depends on his head alone. In Zoser
the world is still entire; no revolution has splintered it and
no renaissance is needed to sustain it. In the granite head,
we detect the animation of a portrait by Donatello; it re-
appears in many heads of the Middle Kingdom and bridles
their form. The Donatellesque quality does not hinder the re-
morseless psychology of their maker which waited andwatched
and forced the visual impression upon the clay. Granite
turns to wax, it seems, under the master’s hand, yet remains
a hard stone. Analysis results in a synthesis as hard as rock.
There is something of Rodin in the modelling: the Rodin
of the noblest portraits, not of the Balzac: the Rodin who
left Donatello with his outline and who filled the outline with
nervous force. The Sesostris head is greater, for the artist
relied less on nerves alone; he thought in stone. When we
use stone, we cannot get beyond simple reproduction;
curiously enough, the comparison with Rodin does not
detract from the Sesostris, for the thought bridges them
naturally. It is not so firm a plank as that which united our
Family with Corot, though it comes closer to us.
There are many good heads dating from the Middle
Kingdom, and not only in the Cairo Museum. I remember
an equally expressive obsidian head. They did not often
reach such heights, but even the transitional things captivate
us. So much at this period is transitional. In the corridor
there is a fragment of a colossal granite statue, here oddly
ascribed to the third dynasty, though actually dating from
the Middle Kingdom at the earliest; it is a mighty head
adorned with every sort of emblem, and set on mighty
shoulders. Its expressiveness triumphs over the trophy-like
splendour of ornament.
136