PAINTING IN GLASS. 



Tented, which consisted in employing a pencil brush with wax dis- 

 solved ovf r a fire ; which produced a painting for vessels that was 

 never injured by the sun, the sea. water, or the winds." The pas- 

 age is by no means perspicuous ; and Pliny, who was no painter 

 himself, does not appear to have been in the secret in cither case. 

 All \ve can collect is, that every mode was alike encaustic, or cor- 

 rosive by means of fire : that, i<i the two former, a cestrum or 

 pointed graver was employed ; and, in the latter, a pencil-brush. 

 M. Levesque observes, therefore, as has been observed also by 

 M. Scheffer, (Graphice, par. 16.) that the painting upon ivorj 

 was less properly a painting than an engraving, the point of the 

 gravor being heated in the fire to a red heat that the lines were 

 of one colour alone, and this a black or a tawny. I know not, 

 however, what reason these writers have for limiting the encaustic 

 painting on ivory to any individual colour: those in wax, most as. 

 suredly comprehend every kind and combination of colour ; fo'r, in 

 the ode of Anacreon above referred to, he makes express mention 

 of black, white, blue, and red ; and as the instrument employed 

 in both these modes was the same, as they were both effected by a 

 similar process of fire, and as Pliny does not inform us that there 

 was any difference in the application of the instrument, we may as 

 readily suppose that the encaustic on ivory admitted the introduc- 

 tion of different colours, as the encaustic in wax. M. le Compte 

 de Cay I us imagined he had recovered the Grecian mode of encaus. 

 tic ship- painting a few years ago ; but his method, though hige- 

 nious, is rather a new invention than a revival of that spoken of 

 by Pliny; in the language of M. Levesque, it is an ustion rather 

 than inustion ; K&urts but not eyxcutn;. 



[Good's Translation of Lucretius^ Note to book 5j 77. 327* 



SECTION II, 



Painting in Glass. 



THE ancient painting in glass was very simple : it consisted in 

 the mere arrangement of pieces of glass of different colours in 

 some sort of symmetry, and constituted what is now called Mosaic 

 work. In process of time they came to attempt more regular de- 

 signs, and also to represent figures heightened with all their shades : 

 yet they proceeded no farther than the contours of the figures in 



