Vivas Sainz, Inmaculada::virtual::4734::600Vivas Sainz, InmaculadaVivas Sainz, InmaculadaVivas Sainz, Inmaculada2024-05-202024-05-202019-03-04978-3-7001-8005-0https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/15578This study explores the question of innovation and new pictorial resources in New Kingdom art, especially in the 18th and 19th Dynasty private Theban tombs, which seem to have been a more convenient context for artists’ innovations, where they explored new possibilities. A good example may be the transgression of some Egyptian rules of display which artists have followed over centuries, such as the attempts to create depth and perspective in the composition. Frontal images are also an example of the emancipation from Egyptian rules of display, attested in human figures and animals. In this research focussed on innovation, I have paid special attention to the frontal poses of animals, such as the cats represented under the seats of their owners in tomb scenes, or the frontal dogs shown in the popular desert hunt scenes. These hunting dogs shown en face, sometimes even in a twisted pose, reflect a ‘break’ of the movement of animals, being attested in several private Theban tombs. I believe this type of animal frontal poses could have worked as ‘visual hooks’, calling the attention of the viewer to particular details. It is difficult to say if these innovations are just a self-developed process within the Theban workshops, or if they are the result of artistic foreign influence. We must bear in mind that it was a period of intense contact with the world abroad, when foreign objects displaying new motifs and poses arrived to Egypt, and were appreciated by the elite. In fact, frontal poses in animal depictions are also attested in wooden boxes of NK date or even in objects from the royal sphere, such as pieces from the funerary equipment of the tomb of Tutankhamun, maybe reflecting the so called ‘International Style’ of the 14th century BC, in which iconographic elements and idioms passed between Egypt, the Aegean and the Near East. The most skilled artists could be inspired by foreign iconography and poses when decorating the NK private Theban tombs.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccessbook part