602 POLYCHROMY IN GREEK STATUARY. 



by such great masters as Scopas and Praxiteles? Can we possibly 

 mark all tlie steps and landmarks, can we determine for each period 

 what were the rules that governed the painters of statues'? The most 

 conclusive answer would certainly be a systematic statement of the 

 facts that have been observed. Without claiming such accuracy here, 

 I shall endeavor to characterize, with the assistance of the most import- 

 ant testimony, the principal phases through which Greek polychromy 

 has passed. 1 



I. 



In order to explain the use of polychromy in Greece, frequent refer- 

 ence is made to the influence of the climate, to the peculiarity of an 

 intense light which often blinds the sight, and which on hot summer 

 days, drowns, as it were, the shapes of things and their outlines. At 

 hours when the heat is less fierce, this diffusion of light seems to 

 have no other end than to caress colored forms, and this "all joyous 

 sky," to quote a Greek poet, would look almost offended by the cold 

 and dim "tones," with which we must be content in our climate. This 

 argument has not lost its value because it has so often been invoked, 

 and we are still quite ready to acknowledge that a privileged sky has 

 evoked in the Greeks, as in the Egyptians and the Asiatics, an instinct 

 and a necessity for color. But polychromy exists already in primitive 

 Hellas, long before art was sufficiently advanced to understand its 

 laws and to analyze its harmonies. It has the same origin as the plas- 

 tic art, and a very modest beginning it is. At a time when statuary 

 was represented, all in all, by a few wooden statues, which, wandering 

 image carvers squared with the ax and shaped with the saw and the 

 gauge, painting was the never-failing complement of the work of these 

 implements; it serves to conceal its shortcomings and gives to the 

 work a semblance of life. Aucient writings allude more than once to 

 old idols, painted or gilt, and we know that when religious traditions 

 require it, even in the classic period such wooden images were produced 

 and adorned with colors. Thus at Delos, in the third century, a statue 

 of this kind was ordered to be made every year, to bo worshipped on 

 the great festive day of Dionysius; it passed through the hands of the 



'Quatremere de Quincy was the first to undertake a systematic study of antique 

 polychromy in the Jupiter Olympien (Paris, 1815). Much has been written on this 

 question, and as for ancient works we must refer the reader to the list of writings 

 given by Mr. Sittl, Archreologie der Kunst, page 414, in the Plandbuch der klassi- 

 schen Altertums-Wissenschaft of Iwan von Miiller, Munich, 1895. We shall quote 

 here only a few of the more recent comprehensive publications : Georg Treu, Sollen 

 wir unsere Statuen bemalen? Berlin, 1884. Bliimer, Technologic und Terminologie 

 der Gewerbe und Ktinste bei Griechen und Romern, III, p. 200 and following : Th. Alt, 

 Die Grenzen der Kunst und die Bunttfarbigkeit der Antike, Berlin, 1886. Geskel 

 Saloman, Ueber vielfarbige und weisse Marmorskulptur. Stockholm, 1891. Th. 

 Ballorn, Die Polychromie in der griech. Plastik, Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst de 

 Liitzow, 1893. E. Robinson, Did the Greeks paint their sculptures? The Century, 

 New York, 1891-92. Articles on special subjects Avill be mentioned hereafter. 



