Search -
Sig. 2x2-4B3 of vol.1 . Lectures, delivered in the Royal academy (1831)
Sig 2x24B3 of vol1 Lectures delivered in the Royal academy - 1831 Author:James Barry Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and other coins, the intaglio or engrailed figures on our Gothic tombs, and the uncultivated drawings of boys at school, which are faulty in the same particulars... more ». Reasons have been given, why the Egyptians were never able to advance beyond this unformed, gross, and limited style ofearly art, as other nations had done. It has been said that the nature of their country was unfit to furnish ideas of perfection or beauty; that their religion did not allow the artists to depart from the established form of their idols, and that the profession of arts (not being sufficiently honoured by the state) was practised only by those who were themselves too ignorant and uncultivatedto produce any thing which was not gross and ordinary. The first of those reasons, respecting the mere form of the Egyptians, has, I am convinced, no foundation in fact: the others must be partly admitted. But it appears to me that the great and insurmountable obstruction to their advancement in art arose out of the character and materials of their religion, wrapt up as it was,in a continued allegory (and of the most unfavourable kind) where nothing was shewn for itself, but as the symbol and type of some other thing; a practice that must soon be in opposition, and even in direct contradiction to the very essence and destination of art. great deal of curious and important matter: but whether from his not designing to follow the more obvious route, or from his desire of aiding the system of his ingenious friend Buffon, he appears to have unluckily gone out of his way: however, the facts which he discovered and united, have completely enabled his successor on the subject, Count Carli, to dissipate the literary mist which obscured and prevented our discovering that the real situation of the country of these Atlanti...« less