yoo* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" The labors of the sculptor and painter were combined in producing 

 these images of Buddha, which are always colored in imitation of life, each 

 tint of his complexion and hair being in religious conformity with divine 

 authority, and the ceremony of ' painting of the eyes,' is always observed by 

 devout Buddhists as a solemn festival." 



It is interesting to remark that in its mural representations, 

 Egypt shows us transitions from sculpture to painting, or, more 

 strictly, from painted sculpture to painting proper. In the most 

 sculpturesque kind the painted figures stood out from the general 

 field and formed a bas-relief. In the intermediate kind, relief -en- 

 creux, the surfaces of the painted figures did not rise above the 

 general field, but their outlines were incised and their surfaces 

 rendered convex. And then, finally, the incising and rounding 

 being omitted, they became paintings. 



By the Greeks also, painting was employed in making finished 

 representations of the greater or smaller personages worshiped 

 now the statues in temples and now the figures on stelce, used to 

 commemorate deceased relatives, which, cut out in relief, were, 

 we may fairly infer, colored in common with other sculptured fig- 

 ures, just as were those on Etruscan sarcophagi. Of this inference 

 there has recently been furnished a justification by the discovery 

 of certain remains which, while they show the use of color in 

 these memorials, show also the transition from raised colored fig- 

 ures to colored figures not raised. Explorations carried on in 

 Cyprus by Mr. Arthur Smith, of the British Museum, have dis- 

 closed 



" a series of limestone stelae or tombstones, on which is painted the figure 

 of the person commemorated. The surface of the limestone is prepared 

 with a white ground, on which the figure is painted in colors and in a man- 

 ner which strongly recalls the frescoes of Pompeii." 

 The painting being here used in aid of ancestor- worship, is in that 

 sense, religious. Very little evidence seems forthcoming concern- 

 ing other early uses of painting among the Greeks. We read that 

 before the Persian war, the application of painting " was almost 

 limited to the decoration of sacred edifices, and a few other relig- 

 ious purposes, as coloring or imitating bas-reliefs, and in repre- 

 sentations of religious rites on vases or otherwise." In harmony 

 with this statement is the following from Winckelmann : 



u The reason of the slower growth of painting lies partly in the art itself, 

 and partly in its use and application. Sculpture promoted the worship of 

 the gods, and was in its turn promoted by it. But painting had no such 

 advantage. It was, indeed, consecrated to the gods and temples; and some 

 few of the latter, as that of Juno at Samos, were Pinacothecae, or picture 

 galleries ; at Home, likewise, paintings by the best masters were hung up 

 in the temple of Peace, that is, in the upper rooms or arches. But paint- 

 ings do not appear to have been, among the Greeks, an object of holy, 

 undoubting reverence and adoration." 



