Amarna Art

The Ancient Egyptian art style, known as Amarna Art or the Amarna Style, is a style which was adopted in the Amarna Period (i.e. during and just after the reign of Akhenaten in the late Eighteenth Dynasty), and is noticeably different from more conventional Egyptian art styles.

It is characterized by a sense of movement and activity in images, with figures having raised heads, many figures overlapping and many scenes busy and crowded. Also, the human body is portrayed differently in Amarna style artwork than Egyptian art on the whole. For instance, many depictions of Akhenaten's body give him distinctly feminine qualities, such as large hips, prominent breasts, and a larger stomach and thighs. This is a divergence from the earlier Egyptian art which shows men with perfectly chiseled bodies. Faces on reliefs are still shown exclusively in profile.

The illustration of figures' hands and feet are apparently important. Fingers and toes are depicted as long and slender and are carefully detailed to show nails. The skin color of both male and female is generally dark brown (contrasted with the usual dark brown or red for males and light brown or white for females) – this could merely be convention, or it may depict the ‘life’ blood. Figures in this style are shown with both a left and a right foot, contrasting the traditional style of being shown with either two left or two right feet.