(β) Coming now in the second place to the actual works of art, here, too, we may borrow from Winckelmann, whose descriptions attest once more his exceptional acuteness of observation and distinction, and whose account of the character of Egyptian sculpture is in its main lines as follows[203].
Speaking generally we may say that both grace and vitality, which are the result of the genuine sweep and balance of organic line, are absent from the entire figure and its detailed parts; the outlines are straight or in lines that show less deviation from it, the pose appears constrained and stiff, the feet are thrust close together, and in cases of figures in the upright position where one foot is placed before the other, both point in the same direction instead of having the toes turned outwards. In the same way, in masculine figures, the arms hang down straight and glued to the body. Further, the hands, such is Winckelmann's view, are shaped much as we find them in men who possess hands not badly shaped originally, but deteriorated and neglected; feet, on the other hand, are too flat and spread out, the toes are of equal length and the little toe is neither crooked nor curved inwards: in other respects hands, nails, and toes are not badly shaped, although neither the joints of fingers nor toes are indicated. And similarly we may say of all the rest of the nude figure the muscles and bones are but slightly indicated, and the nerves and veins not at all. In short, so far as detail is concerned, despite the laborious and able execution, just that aspect of the elaboration is absent which alone communicates to the figure its true animation and vitality. The knees, however, bones, and elbows are traceable in relief, as we find them in Nature. Masculine figures are conspicuous for their exceptionally narrow waist above the hips. The backs of figures, on account of their position against columns and their being sculptured from one block with them, are not visible.
Together with this lack of mobility, which is not entirely due to the technical inferiority of the artists, but must be regarded as a result of their primitive conception of the figures of deities and their mysterious repose, is nearly associated the absence of any true situation and any sort or kind of action, which are asserted in sculpture by means of the position and motion of the hands and the demeanour and expression of delineation. No doubt we do find among Egyptian representations on obelisks and walls many figures in movement, but these are purely reliefs and are for the most part painted.
To add a few more examples of even more intimate detail, the eyes are not deeply set as in the Greek ideal, but are almost on a level with the forehead; they are flattened and extended obliquely. The eye-brows, eyelids, and rims of the lips are mainly suggested by the graver's lines, or the brows are indicated by a stroke in relief, which extends as far as the temples and is at that point cut off angular wise. What we above all find wanting here is the projection of the forehead, and along with this, together with uncommonly high placed ears and arched noses, as is the rule with vulgar natures, we have the retreating form of cheekbones, which in contrast to other parts are strongly indicated and emphasized, whereas the chin is always retiring and small; the rigidly closed mouth, too, draws its corners in an outward rather than an under-ward direction, and the lips appear to be separated from each other by a mere slit. Speaking generally, then, such figures are not only wanting in freedom and vitality, but more than anything else the head fails to show us the expression of spiritual significance; the animal aspect is the prevailing one, and Spirit is not as yet suffered to appear in its self-poise and independence.
The execution of animal figures is, on the contrary, according to the same authority, carried through with much knowledge and an exquisite variety of gently gradated outlines and of parts that flow one into the other without a break. And if in the human figures spiritual life is not as yet liberated from the animal type and the interfusion of the Ideal with what is sensuous and of Nature on a new and free model is absent, yet we find here that the specifically symbolical significance of the human no less than the animal figures is directly expressed by means of sculpture in these embodiments of forms, in which human and animal shapes pass into one mysterious union.
(γ) Consequently the works of art, which carry on their face this character, remain at the stage where the breach between significance and form is not yet bridged over. For such a stage significance is still of main importance, and what is aimed at is rather the conception of that in its general aspect, than the vitalization of any one individual figure and the artistic enjoyment derived from such presentment. Sculpture proceeds here from the genius of an entire people, about which we may on the one hand affirm, that it has in the first instance arrived at the point where the need of imaginative conception is disclosed; and it is satisfied to find that indicated in the work of art, which is present in the conception, and here of course is a conception which is religious. We are not therefore entitled, taking into consideration the great strides they have made in laborious activity upon and actual perfection in technical execution, to call the Egyptians uneducated in their sculpture merely on the ground that, despite all this, they did not as yet in great measure seek to attach truth, vitality, and beauty to their results, by virtue of which qualities the free work of art receives a soul. Doubtless from another point of view the Egyptians did advance beyond the mere idea and its necessary demand. They sought further to envisage and embody the same in human and animal forms, nay, they knew how to comprehend and set forth the forms, which they reproduced, clearly, without distortion and in their just relations. They failed, however, to impart to them the breath of vitality, which the human form in its natural state already possesses, and to infuse with them that more exalted life, by virtue of which an active and fluent motion of spirit could be expressed in a created image that was adequate to its significance. Their works rather attest a seriousness that is entirely lifeless, an unsolved riddle, so that the configuration does not so much embody their own individual ideality as permit us to surmise a further significance which is still alien to it. I will here only adduce one example, namely, the frequently recurring figure of Isis, holding Horus on her knees. Here we have, so far as externals are concerned, the same subject-matter that we meet with in Christian art as the Madonna and her Child. In the symmetrical, straight-lined, and immovable pose of the Egyptian example we discover, to quote a recent description[204], "neither a mother, nor a child; there is no trace of affection, smile, or endearment, in a word there is no real expression at all. Tranquil, unperturbed, and immovable is this divine mother, who suckles her divine babe; or rather we have here neither goddess nor mother, nor son, nor god. It is simply the sensuous sign of a thought, which is capable of no result and no passion; it is not the genuine presentation of a real action, still less the just expression of a natural emotion."
And it is precisely this which constitutes the breach between signification and determinate being, which creates the absence of figurative expression in the artistic results of the Egyptian people. Their ideality or spiritual sense is still so imbruted, that it has no imperative desire to possess the precision bound up in a true and vital representation carried through with detailed accuracy, to which the onlooker has nothing to add, but may simply surrender himself to the attitude of reception and translation, because everything is already a gift of the artist. We must have a more lofty feeling of the individual's self-respect aroused than the Egyptians possessed, before we cease to be content with the indefinite and superficial features of art, and make valid in its products a claim to reason, science, motion, expression, soul, and beauty.
(b) We find this artistic self-consciousness, so far as sculpture is concerned, first wholly alive among the Greeks. By its presence all the defects of the Egyptian phase of art vanish. Yet in this further development we do not have to make a wide leap from the imperfections of a type of sculpture still symbolical to the perfected result of the classical Ideal. Rather the Ideal has, in its own distinctive province—I have noticed this more than once—although lifted to a higher range, to remove the defects whereby in the first instance its onward path of perfection is obstructed.
(α) I will here very briefly refer to Aeginetan and ancient Etruscan works of art as examples of such beginnings within the sphere itself of classical art. Both these stages, or rather styles, already pass beyond that point of view, which is satisfied, as was the case with Egypt, in repeating forms, we will not say absolutely opposed to Nature, but at least forms that are lifeless, precisely as they have been received from others, and is further content to place before the imagination a figure, from which the same can abstract its own religious content and recover the same for memory, without, however, attempting to work it out under a mode, by virtue of which the work is made apparent as the individual conception and vitality of the artist himself.
But along with this and to the same degree this preliminary stage of ideal art fails as yet to force its way entirely to the true classical ground, and this, first, because it is still clearly constrained within the bonds of the type and therewith the lifeless; secondly, because though it makes an advance in the direction of vitality and motion, yet in the first instance all that it attains to is the vitality of what is wholly of Nature, rather than that beauty, whose animation is Spirit's own gift, and which manifests the life Spirit inseparably conjoint within the living presentment of its natural form, accepting the individual modifications of this fully completed union with equal impartiality from present vision of actual fact and the free creation of genius. It is only in recent times that we have obtained a more detailed knowledge of Aeginetan works of art, over which it has been a matter of controversy, whether they belonged to Greek art or no. In considering their artistic quality, as representations, we must at once make an essential distinction between the head and the rest of the body. The whole of the body, if we except the head, attests the most faithful apprehension and imitation of Nature. Even accidental features of the skin are copied and excellently executed with an extraordinary manipulation of the marble's surface; the muscles are set forth in full relief and the skeleton framework of the body well indicated; the figures are thickset in their severity of line[205], but are reflected with such knowledge of the human organism, that they appear alive to a limit of actual deception, ay, to an extent, so Wagner assures us[206], that we are almost scared at the sight and hardly like to touch them.