Art and Artist Works
Margaret Draper
AIU Online

Abstract
Artists are the most visual people of all. Some of the artists use the abstract from of painting to express a visual language of form, color, and live to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from the visual references in the world. Some will produce their paintings in the museum so people can look at them as a gallery. I will provide you with two from of art from the Louvre Museum, I will compare and contrast both of them.

Art and Artists Work
From the Lourve Musuem is the Barberini Ivory leaf from an imperial diptych dating from Late Antiquity. It represents the emperor as triumphant victor. It is attributed to an imperial workshop in Constantine. On the back, lists names of the Franklish royal families. It was made up of five rectangular plaques. The plaques are fitted together by tongue and groove joints, around a larger central plaque. It measures 34.2 cm (13in) high b 26.8 cm (11) wide overall, with the central plaque 19 cm(7in) high by 12.5 cm(5) wide b 2.5 cm deep. It shares many features of their decorative schemes. The emperor is accompanied in the main panel by a conquerd barbarian in trousers to the left, representing territory conquered, who holds his foot in thanks, and an angel or victory, crowning the emperor. Above, Christ with a fashionable curl-hair style, flanked by angels.
While the emperor represent him on earth. It was acquired by the Lourve in 1899. It was made from elephant ivory, sculpted and mounted with precious stones. Ivory is a type of dentine - a hard, dense bony tissue which forms most of the teeth and tusks of animals - which has been used for millennia as a material for carving sculpture (mostly small-scale relief sculpture or various types of small statue) and other items of decorative art (such as carved ivory covers for illuminated manuscripts, religious objects, and boxes for costly objects), as well as a range of functional items (piano keys, billiard balls). Ivory was valued by both artists and patrons for its rarity, exceptional durability, and was especially prized among sculptors for its creamy color, smooth texture and soft sheen. The art of ivory carving (including scrimshaw engraving) has been part of the cultures of many different civilizations including those of Egypt, Ancient Greece, Rome, Russia, Japan, China, and India. In addition it was an integral element in the plastic art of Islam, the Medieval Carolingian and Ottonian eras, as well as the Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance periods. It also features in American Indian art, notably of the Inuit and northwest USA. Although less common than bronze or marble sculpture, ivory carving has produced some of the greatest sculptures in the history of art. The fact that ivory - unlike other precious materials - cannot be melted down or re-used was a major factor in its endurance as one of the most specialized of traditional crafts.

Barberini Diptych (c.500-550)
Louvre Museum, Paris.
Detail of the central panel showing the triumphant emperor

Ancient Egypt is most famous for its monumental Egyptian Architecture (c.3000 BCE - 160 CE), and its associated Egyptian sculpture. It is also the first civilization with a recognizable style of art. In paintings, artists depicted the head, legs and feet of their human subjects in profile, while portraying the eye, shoulders, arms and torso from the front. Other conventions dictated how Gods, Pharaohs and ordinary people should be portrayed, and regulated the size, color and figurative positions of these images accordingly. Women were painted with fair skin, men with dark skin. Much of Egyptian art in tombs and temples (hieroglyphs, papyrus scrolls, murals, panel paintings and sculptures) reflects religious themes, especially those concerning the afterlife. In modern times, a number of outstanding Egyptian encaustic wax paintings, known as the Fayum Mummy portraits, dating from 50 CE, have been found preserved in coffins. These pictures offer a fascinating glimpse into the styles, customs and culture of the day. The Step Pyramid of Saqqaa.Built c.2630 BCE. The first known stone bulding in the world.

The first known stone building in the world was the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, rising to a height of 204 feet in six steps. It was built for the pharaoh Djoser in the 3rd dynasty, about 2630 BCE, by Imhotep, his chief architect. Previously, buildings were of mud-brick and wood (with the rare use of stone blocks as a door threshold). At Saqqara, Imhotep translated the traditional building styles and materials into a new medium, stone, using small blocks but retaining all the earlier building characteristics. It is a two dimensional. The Step Pyramid stood within a sacred enclosure with various ritual buildings nearby. These were all dummy buildings, merely facades backed by rubble with shallow doorways entering only a foot or two. None of their columns were free-standing; they were keyed into adjacent walls; the builders were unsure of the new building material's stability. Fluted columns used there precede their Greek counterparts by about 2,000 years. From this first beginning of a stepped pyramid it was a natural development to fill in the steps and obtain a proper pyramid shape. The pyramid, the burial place of the Pharaoh, also represents the sun's rays as they strike the earth, an important symbol of the sun-cult of Heliopolis. The Old Kingdom witnessed the construction of most of the monumental pyramids, including: the Great Pyramid of Khufu/Cheops (one of the traditional Seven Wonders of the World), about 2550 BCE; and the smaller pyramid of Menkaure, about 2530 BCE. It also saw the building of the Great Sphinx at Giza (c.2450 BCE). As far as temples were concerned, the earliest examples were simple structures of mud, reeds and palm leaves, no traces of which remain. Stone temples first appear in the 4th dynasty associated with the Pharaoh's pyramid: these were mortuary temples connected with the funerary cult of the dead pharaoh.

References
Richard Delbrück, Die Consulardiptychen und verwandte Denkmäler, Berlin, 1929, numéro 48 ;
Jean-Pierre Sodini, "Images sculptées et propagande impériale du IVe au VIe siècle : recherches récentes sur les colonnes honorifiques et les reliefs politiques à Byzance", in A. Guillou et J. Durand, Byzance et les images, La Documentation française, Paris, 1994, p. 43-94 ;