| The rediscovery of Ancient Egypt and Egyptian art is one of least appreciated accomplishments of the Renaissance "revival of antiquity." In the first decades of the Quattrocento, humanist "archaeologists" began to recognize the obelisks, pyramids, and other Egyptian and Egyptianizing monuments in Rome as the expressions of a culture distinct from the "Classical" tradition. Their interest was directed primarily to the obelisks and their hieroglyphic inscriptions, which they interpreted, on good ancient authority, as a system of allegorical and non-linguistic image-signs, whose meanings could be deciphered by members of an educated elite. After 1463, the rediscovery of the writings attributed to the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus strengthened the notion that the Egyptians had possessed a secret, proto-Christian theology.;During the 15th-century, a number of important artistic and intellectual figures, including Leon Battista Alberti, Filarete, Annius of Viterbo, Pinturicchio and the author and illustrator of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, explored the symbolic, and narrative possibilities of the hieroglyphs and other Egyptian themes. While these treatments were often more imaginative than archaeological, by the early 16th century, artists of the "Roman School," including Raphael, Giulio Romano and others, began to develop a more precise understanding of the visual properties of the Egyptian monuments. This development coincided with an expansion of scholarly interest in Egypt and the hieroglyphs during the pontificate of Leo X (1513-21), whose court contained some of the most "Egyptophiles" of the period, including Pierio Valeriano. The Egyptianizing trend of the High Renaissance reached its apotheosis with the "Egyptian Page" of the Colonna Missal (c. 1530-38), whose startlingly comprehensive assemblage of Egyptianizing imagery is "deciphered" in the final chapter. |
