Fragment of a Queens Face

856 Words4 Pages
A Fragment of a Queens Face During the visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art I was attracted to a piece of art in the Egyptian gallery called A Fragment of a Queens Face. This piece drew me in because of the mirror like finish and carving in high relief of yellow jasper. The subject was once part of a perplexing portrait of a queen made of different materials like alabaster. Those materials have now been smashed leaving the smooth and sensuous surfaces of her inviting lips to clash with the yellow jasper’s shattered edges cut off right before the base of her nose, causing disunity in the piece. I think it is the detail of the lips that is remarkable. At first glance the lips are symmetrical, however on further examination there seems to be a slight smirk, revealed by a slightly dimpling effect in her left cheek. There is also a small trace of a cheekbone just below the plateau edge of her disfigured head, and her alluring smirk is carved so perfectly it is almost an unrealistic portrayal of beauty. The Queen was discovered in Egypt and was apart of the new kingdom during the Armana period, which was an era under the rule of king Akehenaten. Akehenaten, “radically transformed the political, spiritual, and cultural life of the country.” (Stokstad p.70). He founded a new religion honoring one supreme god and a new capital, which “led to radical changes in royal artistic conventions.”(Stokstad p.70). The Armana period adopted a new style of art, which truly set it apart from more conventional Egyptian art styles we have seen up until that time. Artists began remarkably different stylizations and physical distortions. Sculptures in particular began to stress certain features, such as elongated necks, large ears and lips, protruding hips, which gave a feminine quality even to the portraits of male kings. This sculpture’s lips appear to show an Armana like
Open Document