Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/297

 The Art of the Saite Period. 267 The chief pre-occupatfon of the Saite sculptor was to obtain suppleness of modelling and an apparent finish of execution, both of which, in his opinion, were effective in proportion as the material used was hard and unyielding.^ His chisel was employed much more than formerly in fusing together the various layers of muscle which form the walls of the human structure. He did not lay so much stress on the skeleton, or on the leading lines of the figure, as his early predecessors. His care was mainly devoted to rendering the subtle outward curves and contours, and this he often carries to such excess as to produce a result which is simply wearisome from its want of energy and accent. There is a group at Boulak upon which too much praise has been lavished, to which this stricture thoroughly applies. It represents one of the Fir,. 227. — Bronze Sphinx, Louvre. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gauticr. Psemetheks, clothed in a long robe, standing before the goddess Hathor who is in the form of a cow. The head and torso are finely chiselled, but, through an exaggerated desire for elegance, the arms have been made far too long, and the divine cow is entirely without truth or expression. This defect is still more conspicuous in the two figures of I sis and Osiris that were found with this group. Their execution has reached the extremity of coldness through the excessive use of file and sand-paper.- 1 It would appear that wood-carving was never so popular in Egypt as it was under the Second Theban Empire. The numerous wooden statues which fill our museums date from that period. We have given an example of them in Fig. 50, Vol. I. 2 Mariette, Xotice du Musce, Xos. 3S6 and 3S7. Mariette seems to^ estimate these two statuettes far too highlv.