606 POLYCHROMY IN GREEK STATUARY. 



revolution which about 520 or 530 modified the technics of painted 

 vases. Under the influence of the progress made by painting, and car- 

 ried away by an impulse due perhaps to the innovations of Cimon of 

 Cleones, 1 the ceramists abandoned their old methods. In the place of 

 those black silhouettes, set off by a kind of slip or white paste, but 

 rather sad of aspect, they now prefer clear figures enclosed in a brilliant 

 black ring; in other words, they reverse the relation of values. Will 

 the painters of bas-reliefs remain faithful to superannuated customs? 

 We know they did not. Here, for instance, is a well-known monument, 

 contemporary with the first Attic vases with red figures — we mean the 

 Stela of Veladineza — in which an Athenian, Aristion, is represented 

 in war costume. The ground has preserved a somber tint that sets 

 off the bright effects of the flesh parts and the nets of the hair, which 

 are skillfully managed so as to isolate certain details, like the shoulder 

 piece of the armor. 2 One of the most important discoveries which we 

 owe to the excavations made by the French School at Delphi furnishes 

 an additional argument. In the magnificent frieze of the Treasure of 

 the Siphnians the ground had been painted blue, and if the armor and 

 the clothes have kept some traces of color, no such are seen on the uncov- 

 ered parts. The artist had, moreover, taken care to prevent the colors 

 of the accessory parts from being confounded with those of the ground. 

 A warrior may have a blue helmet on his head, but this j>art of his 

 armor is very cunningly surrounded by a red edging, and thus the eye 

 perceives the outlines very accurately. The painting of bas-reliefs is 

 evidently inclining toward a new system, which will cause sustained 

 efforts to be maintained, and in order to continue a comparison borrowed 

 from ceramic painting, a polychromatic painting will, as far as the total 

 effect is concerned, recall the effect of a vase on which red figures stand 

 out from a dark ground. 



The stela of Yeladineza and the frieze of the Siphnians are marble 

 sculptures. The evolution of which we are speaking coincides, as we 

 have shown, with the employment of a material finer than soft stone, 

 and which, toward the middle of the sixth century, almost everywhere 

 took the place of the tufa, so dear to old sculptors. With the use of 

 marble for sculptures, polychromy also entered upon a new phase. 



II. 



Marble is for us a rare and costly material; there is, as it were, a feel- 

 ing of economy in our regard for it, and this is no doubt one of the 

 reasons why the idea of polychromy was for a time looked upon as a 



'As to this question we refer our readers to the work of Mr. Paul Girard, La Peinture 

 Antique, page 141. 



2 This has-relief has heen reproduced in all its colors in the work entitled Die 

 Attischen Grahreliefs, published by the Academy of Sciences at Vienna, under the 

 direction of Mr. Conzc. See PI. II. Concerning the relations between the poly- 

 chromy of Attic stelae and painting, interesting observations will be found in an 

 article by Mr. Loeschcke, Athenische Mittheilungen, IV, page 26 and ff. 



