A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (of 2)Perrot, Georges
History
A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Perrot, Georges
Art -- Egypt -- History; Egypt -- Antiquities
In view of this definition, it may be asserted that architecture
itself is one of the industrial arts. The first duty of the
constructor is to make his building well fitted for the object it has
to serve. The house must afford a proper shelter for its inhabitants,
the tomb must preserve the corpse entrusted to it from all chance of
profanation, the temple must shield the statue or the symbol of the
god from curious glances, and afford convenient space for ritual
celebrations. These requirements may be fulfilled by edifices which
have no pretensions to beauty. With a roof and a certain number of
naked walls, it is always possible to cover and enclose a given space,
and to divide it into as many portions as may be desired. Such a
process has nothing in common with art. Art steps in when the builder
attempts to endow his work with that symmetry which does not exclude
variety, with nobility of proportion, and with the charm of a
decoration in which both painter and sculptor play their parts. The
constructor then gives place to the architect. The latter, of course,
always keeps the practical end in view, but it is not his sole
preoccupation. The house, as he builds it, has to respond to all the
wants, intellectual as well as corporeal, of civilized man; the tomb
must embody his ideas of death and a future life; the magnificent
dimensions and the gorgeous decorations of the temple must give
expression to the inexpressible, must symbolize the divine majesty to
the eyes of men, and help to make it comprehensible by the crowds that
come to sacrifice and pray.
In all this, the _rôle_ played by art is so preponderant that it would
be unjust to class architecture among the industrial arts. The
ambition of those who built the temple of Amen, at Karnak, or that of
Athené, on the Acropolis, was to produce a work which should give
faithful expression to the highest thoughts which the human mind can
conceive. In one sense, architecture may be called the first of the
arts. In those great compositions whose remains we study with such
reverence, whose arrangements we endeavour with such care to
re-establish, it was the architect who determined what part the
painter and the sculptor should take in the work, who laid out for
them the spaces they were called upon to fill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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