Chap. 6.] THE ANTIQUITY OP PAINTING IN ITALY. 229 



second stage being the employment of single colours ; a process 

 known as " monochromaton,"^'* after it had become more 

 complicated, and which is still in use at the present day. 

 The invention of line-drawing has been assigned to Phiio- 

 cles, the Egyptian, or to Cleanthes^' of Corinth. The first 

 who practised this line-drawing were Aridices, the Corinthian, 

 and Telephanes, the Sicyonian, artists who, without making 

 use of any colours, shaded the interior of the outline by 

 drawing lines ;^^ hence, it was the custom with them to add to 

 the picture the name of the person represented. Ecphantus, 

 the Corinthian, was the first to employ colours upon these 

 pictures, made, it is said, of broken earthenware, reduced to 

 powder. We shall show on a future'"^'^ occasion, that it was a 

 different artist of the same name, who, according to Cornelius 

 Kepos, came to Italy with Demaratus, the father of the Roman 

 king, Tarquinius Prisons, on his flight from Corinth to escape 

 the violence of the tyrant Cypselus. 



CHAP. 6. THE ANTIQUITY OF PAINTING IN ITALY. 



But already, in fact, had the art of painting been perfectly 

 developed in Italy.^^ At all events, there are extant in the 

 temples at Ardea, at this day, paintings of greater antiquit)^ 

 than Rome itself ; in which, in my opinion, nothing is more 

 marvellous, than that they should have remained so long 

 unprotected by a roof, and yet preserving their freshness. ^^ At 

 Lanuvium, too, it is the same, where we see an Atalanta and a 

 Helena, without drapery, close together, and painted by the 



ture, consisted in tracing the shadow of a human head or some other ob- 

 ject on the wall, the interior being filled up with one uniform shade of 

 colour. — B. 



2"* From the Greek )wovoxpw/xarov, " single colouring." — B. 



35 He is mentioned also by Athenagoras, 8trabo, and Athenaeus. 



3s Called ** graphis," by the Greeks, and somewhat similar, probably, to 

 our pen and ink drawings. 



37 In Chapter 43 of this Book.— B. 



38 Ajasson remarks, that a great number of paintings have been lately 

 discovered in the Etruscan tombs, in a very perfect state, and probably of 

 very high antiquity. — B. 



39 There would appear to be still considerable uncertainty respecting 

 the nature of the materials employed by the ancients, and the manner of 

 applying them, by which they produced these durable paintings ; a 

 branch of the art which has not been attained in equal perfection by the 

 moderns. — B. 



