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93. Painting
and relief in
tombs and 
temples
 
 
 

94. Portrait 
sculpture
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

95. Architec-
ture: the 
earliest 
clerestory

 trained artists. Indeed, we can find, in one corner of the wall,  the picture of the artist who painted the walls in one of the  chapels, where he has represented himself enjoying a plentiful feast among other people of the estate. His drawings all around us show that he has not been able to overcome all the difficulties of depicting, on a flat surface, objects having thickness and roundness. Animal figures are drawn, however, with great lifelikeness (Figs. 43-46), but perspective is almost entirely unknown to him, and objects in the background or distance are drawn of almost the same size as those in front.

    The portrait sculptor was the greatest artist of this age. His statues were carved in stone or wood, and colored in the hues of life; the eyes were inlaid with rock crystal, and they still shine with the gleam of life (Fig. 53). More lifelike portraits have never been produced by any age, although they are the earliest portraits in the history of art. Such statues of the kings are often superb (Fig. 52). They were set up in the Pharaoh’s pyramid temple (Figs. 55 and 56). In size the most remarkable statue of the Pyramid Age is the Great Sphinx, which stands here in this cemetery of Gizeh (Fig. 54). The head is a portrait of Khafre, the king who built the second pyramid of Gizeh (Fig. 54), and was carved from a promontory of rock which overlooked the royal city. It is the largest portrait ever wrought.

    The massive granite piers and walls (Fig. 55) of Khafre’s  valley temple (Fig. 39) beside the Sphinx reveal to us the impressive architecture in stone which the men of the early part of the Pyramid Age were designing. This splendid halt (Fig. 55) was lighted by a series of oblique slits, which are really low roof windows. They occupied the difference in level between a higher roof over the middle aisle of the hall and a lower roof on each side of the middle (Fig. 271, 1). Such an arrangement of roof windows, called a clerestory (clear-
story), later passed over to Greece and Rome, and finally suggested the nave of the Christian basilica church or cathedral   [NEXT]

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