Pomiędzy Prusem a Egipcjanami – recepcja sztuki starożytnej w ilustracjach Edwarda Okunia do Faraona

This paper discusses a series of illustrations which Edward Okuń created for an unpublished edition of Bolesław Prus’ novel Faraon [The Pharaoh]. The illustrations were commissioned by the publishing house Gebethner und Wolff, however they were never published. The artist was inspired by the authentic relics of Egyptian antiquity (such as the sarcophagus of Khonsu, the Papyrus of Hunefer, the Papyrus of Ani, Tuthmose IV’s chariot, excavations in the tomb of Tui and Jui) which he admired on his trip to Egypt at the beginning of 1914. He used the Antique models in three ways: Firstly, he employed fragments of certain representations, only changing the framing around them. Secondly, he created mixed compositions from fragments of one or more Egyptian scenes. Thirdly, he introduced separate details reconstructed from the Egyptian relics into the scenes he designed from scratch, with no underlying pattern behind, though with certain degree of faithfulness to the Egyptian canon. In one of the illustrations, he also used the Assyrian canon. The illustrations under analysis stay in various kinds of relationship to the literary content of the novel. In some of them, the artistic Egyptian canon is broken in order to better suit the dramatic nature of the scene depicted by Prus. In others, the illustrations seem to keep closer to the Egyptian patterns, to some extent departing from the plot.