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called by the Romans cerussa usta, and, according to Vitruvius, sandaracha; by the Greeks μíros, and according to Dioscorides, σavdaрákη. It was the colour which we now call vermilion.

The Roman sandaracha seems to have had various significations. Pliny speaks of different shades of sandaracha; there was also a compound colour of equal parts of sandaracha and rubrica calcined, called sandyx, which Sir H. Davy supposed to approach our crimson in tint; in painting it was frequently glazed with purple, to give it additional lustre.

Yellow.-Yellow-ochre, hydrated peroxide of iron, the sil of the Romans, the xpa of the Greeks, formed the base of many other yellows, mixed with various colours and carbonate of lime. Ochre was procured from different parts-the Attic was considered the best; sometimes the paler sort of sandaracha was used for yellow.

Green.-Chrysocolla, which appears to have been green carbonate of copper, or malachite (green verditer), was the green most approved of by the 'ancients; there was also an artificial kind which was made from clay impregnated with sulphate of copper (blue vitriol) rendered green by a yellow die. The commonest and cheapest colours were the Appianum, which was a clay, and the creta viridis, the common green earth of Verona.

Blue. The ancient blues were very numerous; the principal of these was cœruleum, kúavos, azure, a species of verditer, or blue carbonate of copper, of which there were many varieties. The Alexandrian was the most valued, as approaching the nearest to ultramarine. It was also manufactured at Pozzuoli. This imitation was called colon. Armenium was a metallic colour, and was prepared by being ground to an impalpable powder. It was of a light blue colour, and cost 30 sesterces a pound, about 4s. 10a. It has been conjectured that ultramarine (lapis lazuli) was known to the ancients under the name of armenium, from Armenia, whence it was procured. It is evident, however, from Pliny's description, that the" sapphirus" of the ancients was the lapis lazuli of the present day. It came from Media.

Indigo, indicum, was well known to the ancients.

Purple. The ancients had several kinds of purple, purpuris

simum, ostrum, hysginum, and various compound colours. Purpurissimum was made from creta argentaria, a fine chalk or clay, steeped in a purple dye, obtained from the murex (Toрpúpa). In colour it ranged between minium and blue, and included every degree in the scale of purple shades. The best sort came from Pozzuoli. Purpurissimum indicum was brought from India. It was of a deep blue, and probably was the same as indigo. Ostrum was a liquid colour, to which the proper consistence was given by adding honey. It was produced from the secretion of a fish called ostrum, öσrpeov, and differed in tint according to the country from whence it came; being deeper and more violet when brought from the northern, redder when from the southern coasts, of the Mediterranean. The Roman ostrum was a compound of red ochre and blue oxide of copper. Hysginum, according to Vitruvius, is a colour between scarlet and purple. The celebrated Tyrian dye was a dark, rich purple, of the colour of coagulated blood, but, when held against the light, showed a crimson hue. It was produced by a combination of the secretions of the murex and buccinum. In preparing the dye the buccinum was used last, the dye of the murex being necessary to render the colours fast, while the buccinum enlivened by its tint of red the dark hue of the murex. Sir H. Davy, on examining a rose-coloured substance, found in the baths of Titus, which in its interior had a lustre approaching to that of carmine, considered it a specimen of the best Tyrian purple. The purpura, as mentioned in Pliny, was an amethyst or violet colour.

Brown.-Ochra usta, burnt ochre.-The browns were ochres calcined, oxides of iron and manganese, and compounds of ochres and blacks.

Black.—Atramentum, or black, was of two sorts, natural and artificial. The natural was made from a black earth, or from the secretion of the cuttle-fish, sepia. The artificial was made of the dregs of wine carbonized, calcined ivory, or lamp-black. The atramentum indicum, mentioned by Pliny, was probably the Chinese Indian ink.

White. The ordinary Greek white was melinum, an earth from the Isle of Melos; for fresco-painting the best was the African parœtonium. There was also a white earth of Eretria,

and the annularian white. Carbonate of lead, or white-lead, cerussa, was apparently not much used by the ancient painters. It has not been found in any of the remains of painting in Roman ruins.

Methods of Painting.-There were two distinct classes of painting practised by the ancients-in water-colours, and in wax; both of which were practised in various ways. Of the former the principal were fresco, al fresco; and the various kinds of distemper (a tempera), with glue, with the white of egg, or with gums (a guazzo); and with wax or resins when these were rendered by any means vehicles that could be worked with water. Of the latter the principal was through fire (dià Tupòs), termed encaustic (eykavσTIKỳ, encaustica).

Fresco was probably little employed by the ancients for works of imitative art, but it appears to have been the ordinary method of simply colouring walls, especially amongst the Romans. Colouring al fresco, in which the colours were mixed simply in water, as the term implies, was applied when the composition of the stucco on the walls was still wet (udo tectorio), and on that account was limited to certain colours, for no colours except earths can be employed in this way.

The fresco walls, when painted, were covered with an encaustic varnish, both to heighten the colours and to preserve them from the injurious effects of the sun or the weather. Vitruvius describes the process as a Greek practice, which they term καῦσις. When the wall was coloured and dry, Punic wax, melted and tempered with a little oil, was rubbed over it with a hard brush (seta); this was made smooth and even by applying a cauterium or an iron pan, filled with live coals, over the surface, as near to it as was just necessary to melt the wax; it was then rubbed with a candle (wax) and a clean cloth. In encaustic painting the wax colours were burnt into the ground by means of a hot iron (called cauterium) or pan of hot coals being held near the surface of the picture. The mere process of burning in constitutes the whole difference between encaustic and the ordinary method of painting with wax colours.

POLYCHROMY.-We shall now say a few words with regard to the much canvassed question of painting or colouring statues. Its antiquity and universality admit of no doubt. Indeed, the practice of painting statues is a characteristic of a primitive and

barbarous style of art. Though it must be admitted that the early Greek artists painted their wooden, clay, and sometimes their marble, statues, we must positively refuse credence to what some would wish us to believe, that the Greek sculptors of the best period coloured the nude parts of their marble statues.* This mistake has arisen from a misconception of the word circumlitio, mentioned by Pliny, which expresses a paint* The application of colour to statues and temples I would consider to belong to a late or Roman period of art. As Nero had the statue of Alexander, by Lysippus, gilt, so we may suppose the colour, the traces of which are found on some Greek statues of the fine period of art, was applied at a much later period to please the false taste of that age. Virgil mentions a Cupid with coloured wings; the three Corinthian columns of the temple of Minerva Chalcidica, in the Forum, were painted red, and the Trajan column still retains traces of colour and gilding used at that period; colour has been discovered on the statue of Augustus in the Vatican; a statue of Venus was discovered at Pompeii with the hair painted yellow, while the drapery which covered the lower members, was painted blue; a small statue of Bacchus was also found with traces of colour and gilding on it; a colossal statue of an emperor, in Greek marble, discovered in 1853, had the hair painted red, the mantle purple, and the buskins black; this practice was thus evidently in accordance with the taste then prevailing in Roman art, the extravagance of which has been deplored by Pliny and Vitruvius. The following remarkable passage of Vitruvius is to the purpose:-"The ancients laboured to accomplish and render pleasing by dint of art, that which in the present day is obtained by means of strong and gaudy colouring, and for the effect which was formerly obtained only by the skill of the artist, a prodigal expense is now substituted. Who, in former times, used minium otherwise than as a medicine? In the present age, however, walls are everywhere covered with it. To this may be added the use of chrysocolla (green), purple, and azure decorations, which, without the aid of real art, produce a splendid effect." In this passage it is quite evident that Vitruvius places art-that is, beauty of form and proportion, and absence of colour, adopted by the sculptors and architects of the best period-in opposition to the gaudy colouring used by the artists of his day. Further, we have here evidence that red (minium) could not have been applied in sculpture or architecture by the artists of the best period, as in those times it was used only as a "medicamentum." If colour had been applied to sculpture and architecture by artists of the age of Phidias, Praxiteles, or Lysippus, Vitruvius would doubtless have referred to that practice in this passage. Throughout the whole of the work of Pausanias, who traversed Greece, no allusion is made to coloured statues, with the exception of some examples of a rude and primitive age. He mentions, however, frequently statues of white marble, λítov λeUKOû. The peculiar characteristic of Parian or statuary among ancient writers was its whiteness and purity, Пapíov λílov λevкoтépav, Pind. Nem. iv. 131. Pario marmore purius, Hor. Carm. 1, 19, 5. This could not be said of it, if it were covered with paint.

ing round (Tepixpiσis), a framing of the borders of the drapery, the hair; and sometimes border ornaments variously executed (of which the archaic Minerva in the Museum of Naples is a valuable instance); a painting of the ground round the figures, in order to separate and make them stand out, as Quinctilian VIII., s. 2, shows: a "circumductio colorum in extremitatibus figurarum, quâ ipsæ figuræ aptius finiuntur et eminentius extant." This practice was confined alone to the metopes, bas-reliefs, and the background of statues in pediments, and all such objects as were placed high up, and were to be seen from a distance. The effect was calculated for height and distance; the most ancient instances of which are the metopes from the temple of Selinus. This mode of colouring was practised only at an archaic period, for Plutarch tells us that the ancient statues (τὰ παλαιὰ τῶν ἀγαλμárov) were daubed with vermilion, and no stronger evidence can be adduced of the imperfection, antiquity, and, we may add, barbarism of the art in any nation, than this custom of painting sculpture, as may be seen in the early sculptures of Assyria, India, and Mexico. The κavois applied by the so-called painters of statues, ayaλμáтwv eykavotai, to the nude parts, was not paint or colouring, but white wax melted with oil, which was laid on with a thick brush, and rubbed dry: "ita signa marmorea nuda curantur," Vitruvius says-a practice adopted by Canova. On the other hand, we have no proof that the Greeks coloured the nude parts of their statues; on the contrary, we have positive evidence that the masterpiece of antiquity, the Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles, was colourless. That the Venus de' Medici had her hair gilt, cannot be adduced as any evidence, for in the opinion of Flaxman, to whose correct taste this fashion was totally repugnant, it is a deteriorated variety of the Venus of Praxiteles, and consequently of a later period, when art was in a declining and degraded state. We may, therefore, be led to this conclusion, that the custom of colouring sculpture was only practised at the worst periods of art, at the archaic period, and when it was in its decline.

That Plato mentions that the artists of his age adopted the practice of painting statues, is no proof that the eminent sculptors of his age coloured their marble statues, any more than the modern custom in Italy of painting statues of the Virgin and saints, proves that Michael Angelo or Canova coloured their statues. It was evidently a practice of inferior artists in inferior

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