El ciclo egipcio de la eterna regeneración a través de la tumba de Nebamun: su influencia en la pintura histórica de Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Abstract

With the emergence of Romanticism on the European continent, a growing passion for the Orient (from Arabian One Thousand and One Nights to Nazarite Granada, passing through Pharaonic Egypt) was strongly felt in the panorama of arts and literature, lasting even when the influence of that movement had already come to an end. As the century progressed, that fascination evolved from a more whimsical and personal historical recreation to a deep interest in archaeological rigor, something especially palpable in English painters who, in the last decades of the Victorian era, succumbed to the charm of the Egyptian theme. One of the best examples is undoubtedly that of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912), whose work was characterized by the inclusion of clothing, headdresses, furniture and numerous details based on the meticulous study of objects belonging to antiquity. In our study we propose to analyze the influence exerted by the pictorial cycle of Nebamun’s tomb in the production of this artist, comparing his paintings set in Ancient Egypt with the fragments of that cycle preserved in the British Museum. In this way we will check to what extent his painting is indebted to them, both in regard to the subject matter of some of these paintings and in terms of the direct inclusion of the Nebamun scenes as a decorative element of their interiors.