604 POLYCHROMY IN GREEK STATUARY. 



If wooden statuary already requires the use of colors, sculptures of 

 soft stone exact it 'likewise as an indispensable complement. The 

 sculptor who uses this friable material that yields so readily to the 

 chisel can not reproduce all the details of the shapes that make up his 

 model. And even if he wished it, even if he had the talent that is 

 needed, he would not be able to do it because of the imperfect tools 

 and the quality of the stone. It has been very justly asserted that the 

 monuments themselves attest the inefficiency of the tools that these 

 primitive artists used ; it was always the saw and the gauge with which 

 these image makers shaped their wooden idols. A sculptor of the sixth 

 century might have carved a stone so as to produce a statue or a pedi- 

 ment, but would he have considered his work completed when he had 

 summarily modeled large, level surfaces and hollowed out the limestone 

 with his gauge so as to shape the curls of the head or the folds of the 

 drapery? His eye will be shocked by the defects in the stone, by the 

 rough and uneven aspect it presents. There will be a call for painting 

 that is here also to play its part, to conceal the imperfections of the 

 material, to beautify the work, and to give to the statue its final, definite 

 aspect. In such cases, polychromy ought to be as complete as possible, 

 and it is thus, indeed, that the monuments show it to us, especially the 

 pediments of the Acropolis, in which color, freely diffused over all the 

 sculptured parts, covers them with simple, quiet tints liberally dis- 

 tributed. Thus we obtain a well-established law for primitive Greek 

 art, whether the work be a statue or a bas-relief — sculpture in soft stone 

 requires complete coloring. 



What is, on the other hand, the representative value, so to call it, of 

 such polychromy? Does it aim at reproducing the reality of the colors, 

 to give within the limits of its resources the semblance of life? As far 

 as statuary, properly so called, is concerned, we hardly possess any- 

 thing more than mere fragments — some heads and parts of draped 

 statues. 1 They show us some reds and some blues applied to the gar- 

 ments. At times the flesh is painted red. As we meet with the same 

 colors in monumental sculptures, we may take it for granted that poly- 

 chromy follows the same laws in both cases and preserves the same 

 character. Kow it is, beyond all doubt, purely conventional. Exam- 

 ine with a view to this point the most remarkable of the pediments 

 carved in soft stone that has been found on the Acropolis of Athens, 

 that which contains, among other figures, the strange shape of Typhon, 

 consisting of three busts of men, each of them provided with a ser- 

 pent's tail. 2 The prevailing colors are red and blue. They alternate in 

 long stripes, which cover the bodies of the serpents, in the ornamenta- 

 tion of the unfolded wing belonging to one of the busts. The absolute 

 indifference of the painter with regard to truthfulness, or even proba- 

 bility, is clearly enough shown by the eccentric coloring of the heads. 



1 Ilolleaux, Bulletin de correspondance helle'nique, X, PI. VII. 

 2 Revue arche"ologique, 1891, Pis. XIII-XIV. 



