Egyptian Painting - History of Egyptian Wall Paintings

Egyptian Painting was the necesssary complement to engraving, a means of making it more expressive and evocative, of endowing the work with magical life. All Egyptian ancient art was coloured . The ordinary people of ancient Egypt painted poor quality wood, pottery or stone; the "great" people commissioned funeral effigies with polychrome effects and iridescent reliefs for their tombs; kings had their burial chambers decorated with remarkable paintings in which they figured alongside the gods and spirits; The walls of the Temples were embellished throughout with gold leaf and painted reliefs; the hieroglyphs on the obelisks were studded with lapislazuli. Furniture too was inlaid or painted. To earthly life and to etnernal life colour was as vital as any other element able to confer existence and mortality.

There were important and strict injunctions to such sacred painting. For instance, women's skin is always painted light or pinkish yellow whereas men skin is red ochre. The only exception was the goddess Hathor who according to the law, had a skin as dark as one of a man.

Backgrounds are white and less freguently yellow. The only break with tradition was in the Amarna period and the years immediatly preceding and following that era of rapid evolution.

It took the form of a search for new colours, a freedom in the expression of movement and versimilitude in the representation of forms which had never been attainded before. Even then however, the artist remained bound by the artistic conventions established "in the time of the Gods".

Egyptian painting and reliefs have no perspective. The three-dimensional is not sought and depicted, with people, animals, and objects arranged in two dimensions next to and above one another. However the side view is often combined with the front view: for people for example, head, mouth, torso, legs and feet are shown in profile, while eyes, upper body and hands are shown from the front. In this way shapes were clearer and more easily recognisable. The eye was depicted looking at the spectator, and though facial expressions were not detailed, the most vital part of the face was, with no concern for perspective.

As seen in the previous page, the colour has a particular significance with reddish-brown for the male bodies, yellow for the females, expect for goddess Hathor who, according to the law, had a skin as dark as one of a man. . Osiris the god of death is an exception altogether since his body is black or green.

Colours came from natural ingredients which were pulverised and diluted with water and gum which helped them to stick to the support.

Yellows and brick reds were obtained from desert ochres, white from chalk or lime. Lamp -black was also used. Blues and greens were extracted from calcined mixtures with a colbat base for blue, a copper base for green.

The differring sizes of the people characterised their importance: the pharaoh appeared bigger than the official, the master of the tomb bigger than his servants. Another vital and interesting ingredient in the wall paintings of the tombs is the depiction of agrucultaral and farm scenes which had for its purpose, the symbolic offerings to the deceased. Musicians and dancers enlievened