Art of the Ramesside Period
...s were shown with calm, serene expressions and were almost always tilted slightly towards the sky as if basking in the suns rays. The legs were turned to the same side as the head with one foot in front of another and every figure sat or stood in a stiff rigid position. Nothing was allowed to be drawn in front of the Pharaoh’s face or body which is why in the picture to the left, the bow is painted behind him so the Pharaoh is shooting an arrow in an impossible stance. As you see, the Pharaoh in this portrait seems to be slaughtering a number of midgets. In Egyptian art, important figures were shown their status by their size. Pharaoh’s and the God’s were drawn to a larger scale and the lower the status, the smaller they were drawn. So when you see someone who is painted larger than someone else, it’s not to show that they’re closer. The Egyptians tended to put objects nearer at the bottom and the object further away near the top but with no different in scale. The most common scenes in art of the Ramesside period and of any other period were battle scenes and scenes of the afterlife. There were also many animals depicted in Egyptian art. In portraits, the animals tended to be drawn with great detail so that it looked lifelike but humans always tended to have the same statue-like look. Paintbrushes were made from reeds with ends frayed and cut to shape and colours were made from minerals to form a thick paste. Minerals like copper compounds made the colour blue and green. The Egyptians had a special colour code in their paintings. They used six colours in their art: red, blue, green, yellow, black and white. The God, Osiris was almost always painted green signifying regrowth and resurrection. Red symbolized power. Red was life, victory, anger and fire. The God Ises and the God Set were often both associated with the colour red. Blue was the colour of creation and rebirth and the God Amun, who played a part in creation was painted with a blue face. Yellow symbolized anything eternal and indestructible. It was the colour of Ra and all the pharaohs like the sun and gold. The colour black was death and represented the underworld and white was the colour of purity. Almost all Egyptian paintings were accompanied with hieroglyphics, the Egyptian form of writing. The afterlife scenes painted in Pharaohs’ tombs had hieroglyphics stating certain spells meant to ensure the resurrection of the King and his union with the Gods in the sky. Hieroglyphs were really like art. They were ...