Discuss the artistic transition in Egypt represented by Akhenaten and His Family and the Amarna style.

What will be an ideal response?

The painted limestone relief shows how Egyptian art changed in response to Akhenaten’s beliefs. This pharaoh suppressed traditional worship of most deities in favor of a cult centered on a sun god, Aten. This work shows Akhenaten with his family under the sun’s benevolent rays. The scene is carved away from the top plane, the opposite of most reliefs, which protrude from a lowered background. The figures are presented in casual poses in ways that depart sharply from the idealized depictions of pharaohs in earlier periods. The rays of the sun end in abstract representations of hands, some of which hold the looped cross known as the ankh, an Egyptian symbol of life. Thus, the Sun gives life to the ruler and his family. Of special import is the prominent place of Akhenaten’s wife, Nefertiti, in the scene. She sits only slightly below her husband and appears to share his position and authority. The perfection of the gods was in question, and the principles of art were open to re-examination as well. Therefore, the new art replaced the traditional canon of proportion—the familiar poses of king and queen—with realism and a sense of immediacy, even intimacy. So Akhenaten allowed himself and his family to be portrayed with startling realism, in what has become known, from the modern name for the new capital, as the Amarna style.