276 ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Past II. 



colour (like that of the Purbeck marble columns in our own 

 churches); and the walls of tombs, and even small monu- 

 ments, as statues, and other objects, in common stone, were 

 often stained to imitate red granite, like the interior of a 

 tomb at Beni Hassan. 



61. Pliny says the oldest paintings (long before the 

 age of Eomulus) were monochrome, or of a single colour ; 

 which is perfectly true of all archaic paintings representing 

 the human figure, to which he here evidently alludes ; but this 

 remark applies equally to early statues and bas-reliefs, which 

 were originally of an uniform red hue, as I shall have occasion 

 to show. 



Raoul-Eochette (" Peintures Antiques," p. 237), considers 

 portraits to be very rare in Greece ; and doubts their being 

 called catagrapha, or obliquoe imagines; but though these 

 do not actually signify portraits, they might be applied to any 

 painting where the head was " foreshortened;" and Pliny even 

 appears to use the expression " obliqua imago" for "profile." 



Eaoul-Rochette also thinks profiles were rare ; which is true 

 with reference to first-rate pictures of the best periods ; but 

 there is little doubt that the earliest representations of the 

 human face were all in profile, which continued till a late 

 time on vases and the walls of tombs. Such too was the mode 

 of drawing it among all early people, and in the infancy of art; 

 as we learn from the paintings of Egypt, Etruria, and other 

 countries. Portraits were of very early date in Egypt, and 

 they were in profile ; the full face was rare, and always un- 

 pleasing, and the three-fourth face was quite unknown ; but 

 in Greece both these last appear to have been preferred to 

 profile, when art was developed; and Pliny (xxxv. 10), shows 

 that Apelles only made the portrait of Antigonus in profile, 

 to hide an imperfection. " Pinxit et Antigoni regis imaginem 

 altero lumine orbam, prius excogitata ratione vitia condendi ; 

 obliquam namque fecit, ut quod corpori deerat, picturoe potius 



