Sculptors' Models - Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sculptors'Models In

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E R IC Y 0 UN G

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AssistantCuratorof EgyptianArt

It is the fashionto demolishthe theoriesof the past and to questionthe acceptedbeliefs of earliergenerationsof scholars.This is as it should be-the developmentof scholarship is like the life cycle of the butterfly: the static larval stage is passed, the dynamic wingedstage is to come, and we are now in the chrysalisstage, the rebuildingof the fabricof knowledge. is occurringin the Such a metamorphosis study of Egyptianart, archaeology,and history of the laterperiods,from the end of the New Kingdom to the end of the Greco-

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it hed,we knowfrom comparing Althoughthisfigureof a queenappearsfinis, the the that illusstration withthebustof a queenin thepreceding locksof wig,the the collar remain to be carved. feathersof thevulturecrown,andthe beadsof Theothersidebearsthefigureof a kingin2a similarstageof carvingand, acrossthecornerson all threesurvivingedges s, a numberof drilledholesused the holesis visibleherein the broken in the suspensionof theplaque. One of areaat the bottomright.88 x 78 inches.R?ogersFund, 07.228.3

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Roman Period (that is, from about 1000 B.C. to the third or fourth century A.D.), thanks

to the painstakingworkof a handfulof scholars. Here it is necessaryonly to mention the namesof two men: BernardV. Bothmerof the BrooklynMuseumand Hermande Meulenaere of Brusselsare compilinga monumental Corpusof Late EgyptianSculpture, which even beforefinalpublicationis changing our entire conceptionof the art of the last thousandyears of the native Egyptian culture. It is fromtime to time necessary,however, even at the riskof appearingold-fashioned,to come to the defenseof older theoriesand to show them to be still worthy of adherence. Such, I feel, is the case with a group of lime-

stone sculpturesthat date approximatelyto the third century

B.C.,

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during the reign of

the earlierPtolemies.These consistof small rectangularplaqueswith figures,or parts of figures,in low reliefon one or both sidesand a related seriesof sculpturesin the round,

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MARCH 1964

The Metropolitan Museum of Art B U L L E T I N

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which togetherform f t most commonclass the ?ofsculptureof the periodin manycollections of Egyptian art, where they are labeled, in accordancewith the older theoriesof their sculptors'models, trial pieces, or study pieces.BernardV. Bothmer,in an articlein ^theBoston Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, has seen in these sculpturesvotive offerings

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scholarlycautionhe adds that someare what they seem, sculptor'smodels, and that each case has to be decided individually. In private conversationwith the althoughnot in his publishedwork,he has indicated that he is influencedby the existence of a very similarphenomenonin Greekart. The Greekvotivesin questionare two kinds- correspondingclosely to the two groups of Egyptian sculptures-firstly, small terracottaplaqueswith painted or rellief scenes, figures, dancers, satyrs, herms, the like, and, secondly,partsof the body of limestone in relief or in the feet, hands, toes, fingers, mouths, eyes, breasts,and so forth.The exact purpose

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