Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c17.17

c17.17

Image making in Ceylon in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was at a comparatively low level, though not so low as that now reached in the low-country by artists unfamiliar with the canon, or in the weak alabaster images that are imported from Burma. The matter is that the canon has been used, not as a guide merely, but quite slavishly by artists who, in spite of their strong decorative sense and capacity for ordinary drawing, had little or no feeling for the human figure as such, though they felt the symmetry, passivity, and grandeur of the symbol they made stand for it. "The image must exemplify a person with an unfettered, quiescent, and absolutely pure mind, pre-eminent from head to foot." The artist did actually work with such ideals before him, and they could not but be reflected in it. The traditional work, despite the decay of the tradition, is still in restraint, dignity and religious feeling vastly superior to the sensuous and effeminate work of ignorant craftsmen in the low country, influenced by European art, but with no taste or real knowledge of drawing.