§G3. COLOURED STATUES. 279 



of Praxiteles; but if he left a nude Venus uncoloured, as 

 Signor Monti states, this does not prove an old custom, that of 

 colouring statues, to have been then abandoned, and a new 

 one introduced by him. Indeed, we find from Pliny, that 

 the Eomans began to paint statues (" coepimus et lapidem 

 pingere ") ages afterwards, which could only be in imitation of 

 a custom still prevalent among their masters the Greeks, and 

 must signify that the Eomans then, for the first time, began 

 to give them the natural flesh-colour ; the custom of painting 

 them of one uniform red hue having existed at Kome from 

 the earliest period. It is not probable that the Greeks 

 coloured statues in old, and then again in later times, after 

 having abandoned the custom during the intermediate period ; 

 nor will any one maintain the mere painting in monochrome 

 red ochre continued to the time of Praxiteles. Phidias, who, 

 as Pliny more than once tells us, was a painter before he 

 became a sculptor, painted the shield of Minerva's statue, and 

 his brother Panasus the inside of the same shield ; Lecythion 

 also painted a shield of Minerva's statue (Pliny, xxxv. 8) ; and 

 Phidias, as Strabo tells us (viii. 244), was assisted by Pan- 

 daenus in colouring the statue of Jupiter at Olympia. So 

 that we have here other notices of coloured statues at the best 

 period, a little before Praxiteles; and Plato (Eep. iv. 420) 

 says they painted them according to the colour of each part : 

 that is, of the natural tints. Ovid too (Am. ii. 5, 39,) al- 

 ludes to the colouring of ivory to represent the face : and it 

 was so treated in the Chryselephantine statues. 



63. Some who have felt the impossibility of denying the 

 authority of such writers on this point, have endeavoured to 

 compromise the matter by supposing that a mere tinge was 

 given to the marble ; while others, who admit that the statues 

 of early times were painted of one uniform hue, maintain that 

 the refined taste of a later age discarded that archaic custom, 

 without making in its stead any attempt to imitate the 



T 4 



