278 ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Pakt II. 



art would be intolerable. But our inability to succeed in it 

 does not prove the custom never to have existed ; as a bad 

 picture is no argument against the possibility of excellence in 

 painting; and because we cannot succeed in giving a good 

 effect to coloured statues, let us not hastily conclude it was 

 never done by others. The Greeks appear to have con- 

 sidered the colouring of statues a difficult branch of art ; and 

 we are justified in this conclusion by what Pliny tells us 

 (xxxv. 11): — that Praxiteles attached a higher value to 

 those of his own statues which had been coloured by a first- 

 rate painter. For being asked which of his statues he con- 

 sidered the best, he answered : " those to which Nicias had 

 applied his hand ; " showing " the importance he attached to 

 the colouring (circumlitioni) of that artist." 



Some have raised a question respecting the meaning of the 

 expression circumlitio, which has been thought to be simply 

 a finish to the marble, or a coating of some kind to impart 

 softness to the stone ; but it would be strange if a first-rate 

 sculptor were obliged to apply to another person for such as- 

 sistance, or if a painter of eminence were called upon to give 

 any other aid than that which his particular art would supply. 

 A sculptor would be as capable of adding the necessary finish 

 or coating to the marble as the painter, and circumlitio will 

 not apply to a coating of coloured wax rubbed into the heated 

 marble, as some have suggested. Indeed, when Vitruvius 

 mentions this latter process (vii. 9), — the /cavais of the Greeks, 

 — he does not apply to it any term similar to circumlitio ; 

 and that circumlitio signified " painting " is proved by the 

 "pictura in qua nihil circumlitum est" ofQuintilian (viii. 

 5, 26) ; by Seneca's saying (Ep. lxxxvd. 5), " illis (marmoribus) 

 undique operosa et in picturce modum variata circumlitio 

 prsetexitur ; " as well as by the frequent use of derivatives 

 from the verb lino, in later times, with reference to painting. 



Signor Monti thinks all statues were coloured before the time 



