Fig. 259.—Design transferred by squaring. From Prisse.
As the bas-relief was thus preceded a sketch which was more or less liable to modification, it would seem probable that a similar custom obtained in the case of the statue. It appears especially unlikely that those great figures in the harder rocks which represented such an enormous outlay of manual labour, would be attacked without some guide which should preserve them from the chance of ruin by some ill-considered blow. Did the Egyptian sculptor begin, then, with a clay sketch? There is no positive information on the subject, but in all those numerous bas-reliefs which represent sculptors at work, there is not one in which the artist has before him anything in the shape of a model or sketch to guide him in his task. It is possible that the sameness of his statues, especially of his colossal figures in granite or sandstone, enabled the Egyptian to dispense with an aid which the infinite variety of later schools was to render necessary.
The Egyptian sculptor was contented with a few simple attitudes which he reproduced again and again. He doubtless began by marking the salient points and relative heights of the different parts upon his block. The rock was so hard that there was little risk of his journeymen spoiling the material by taking away too much, supposing them to be carefully overlooked. Marble would have been far more liable to such an accident. Even Michael Angelo, when he worked the marble with his own hands, spoilt more than one fine block from Carrara.
Although we have no evidence to show that the Egyptians understood the use of clay models, we have some idea of the process by which they were enabled to do without them, and of the nature of their professional education. The chief Egyptian museums possess works which have been recognized as graduated exercises in the technique of sculpture. They are of limestone, and of no great size—from four to ten inches high. The use of these little models is shown to have been almost universal by the fact that Mariette found them on nearly every ancient site that he excavated. Their true character is beyond doubt.[321] At Boulak there are twenty-seven sculptured slabs which were found at Tanis. One is no more than a rough sketch, just begun. By its side is a completed study of the same subjects. Some of these slabs are carved on both sides; on others we find one motive treated twice, side by side, once in the state of first sketch, and again as a finished study. The plaques which bear the heads of cynocephali, of lions and lionesses, are remarkable for the freedom of their execution (Figs. [260], [261], and [262]).[322] The same may be said of fifteen royal heads found at Sakkarah. They should be examined together. They range[323] in order from No. 623, which is a roughly-blocked-out sketch, to 637, a finished head. One of these models is divided down the middle, so as to give accent to the profile. A few of them are squared in order to test the proportions. But even here no canon of proportion is to be found. "If the squares were based upon some unchanging unit, they would be identical in every model in which they occur. But in one of these heads we find three horizontal divisions between the uræus and the chin; in another four. In most cases the number of the squares seems to have been entirely due to the individual caprice or convenience of the artist. There are but two examples in which another rule seems to have been followed; in them the proportions of the squares are identical, and their intersections fall upon the same points. All that may be fairly deduced from this, however, is that they are the work of the same hands."[324] A second series of royal heads was found at Tanis; others have been discovered in the Fayoum. Boulak also possesses models of the ram, the jackal, and the uræus, of arms, legs, hands, &c. Upon a plaque from Tanis the figure of Isis appears twice, once as a sketch and once as a finished study.
Fig. 260.—Head of a Cynocephalus.
Fig. 261.—Head of a Lion.
