raneously with him flourished Protogenes and Nicias. Protogenes was both a painter and a statuary, and was celebrated for the high finish of his works. His masterpiece was the picture of Ialysus, the tutelary hero of Rhodes, where he lived. He is said to have spent seven years on it. Nicias of Athens was celebrated for the delicacy with which he painted females. He was also famous as an encaustic painter, and was employed by Praxiteles to apply his art to his statues. The glorious art of these masters, as far as regards light, tone, and local colours, is lost to us, and we know nothing of it except from obscure notices and later imitations. It is not thus necessary to speak at length of the various schools of painting in Greece, their works being all lost; the knowledge of the characteristics peculiar to each school would be at the present day perfectly useless. Painting had to follow the invariable law of all development; having reached a period of maturity, it followed, as a necessary consequence, that the period of decline should begin. The art of this period of refinement, Mr. Wornum writes, which has been termed the Alexandrian, because the most celebrated artist of this period lived about the time of Alexander the Great, was the last of progression, or acquisition; but it only added variety of effect to the tones it could not improve, and was principally characterized by the diversity of the styles of so many contemporary artists. The decadence of the arts immediately succeeded, the necessary consequence, when, instead of excellence, variety and originality became the end of the artist. The tendencies which are peculiar to this period gave birth sometimes to pictures which ministered to a low sensuality; sometimes to works which attracted by their effects of light, and also to caricatures and travesties of mythological subjects. The artists of this period were under the necessity of attracting attention by novelty and variety; thus rhyparography, and the lower classes of art, attained the ascendancy, and became the characteristic styles of the period. In these Pyreicus was pre-eminent; he was termed rhyparographos, on account of the mean quality of his subjects. After the destruction of Corinth by Mummius and the spoliation of Athens by Sylla the art of painting experienced a rapid and total decay.

We shall now make a few extracts from Mr. Wornum's excellent article on the vehicles, materials, colours, and methods of painting used by the Greeks.

The Greeks painted with wax, resins, and in water-colours, to which they gave a proper consistency, according to the material upon which they painted, with gum, glue, and the white of egg; gum and glue were the most common.

They painted upon wood, clay, plaster, stone, parchment, and canvas. They generally painted upon panels or tablets (Tivakes, tabulæ), and very rarely upon walls; and an easel, similar to what is now used, was common among the ancients. These panels, when finished, were fixed into frames of various descriptions and materials, and encased in walls. The ancients used also a palette very similar to that used by the moderns, as is sufficiently attested by a fresco painting from Pompeii, which represents a female painting a copy of a Hermes, for a votive tablet, with a palette in her left hand.

The earlier Grecian masters used only four colours: the earth of Melos for white; Attic ochre for yellow; Sinopis, an earth from Pontus, for red; and lampblack; and it was with these simple elements that Zeuxis, Polygnotus, and others of that age, executed their celebrated works. By degrees new colouring substances were found, such as were used by Apelles and Protogenes.

So great, indeed, is the number of pigments mentioned by ancient authors, and such the beauty of them, that it is very doubtful whether, with all the help of modern science, modern artists possess any advantage in this respect over their prede

cessors.

We now give the following list of colours, known to be generally used by ancient painters :—

Red. The ancient reds were very numerous, κivváßapı, μíλтoS, cinnabaris, cinnabar, vermilion, bisulphuret of mercury, called also by Pliny and Vitruvius, minium. The κvváßapı ’Ivdikòv, cinnabaris Indica, mentioned by Pliny and Dioscorides, was what is vulgarly called dragon's blood, the resin obtained from various species of the calamus palm. Miλros seems to have had various significations; it was used for cinnabaris, minium, red lead, and rubrica, red ochre. There were various kinds of rubricæ; all were, however, red oxides, of which the best were the Lemnian, from the Isle of Lemnos, and the Cappadocian, called by the Romans rubrica sinopica, by the Greeks, Evris, from Sinope in Paphlagonia. Minium, red oxide of lead, red lead, was

called by the Romans cerussa usta, and, according to Vitruvius, sandaracha; by the Greeks μíros, and according to Dioscorides, σavdaρáкn. 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 (Toрpúрa). 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, σrрeov, 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 TUρòs), termed encaustic (éykavσTIKǹ, 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