POLYCHROMY IN GREEK STATUARY. 607 



kind of sacrilege. To apply aii artificial coloring' to beautiful Greek 

 marble, with its pure grain, seemed to be almost a profanation. No 

 doubt the Greeks knew its full value. The marble of Paros was an 

 article of exportation, and, notwithstanding the richness of their own 

 Pentelicon, the Athenians bought it and paid a good price for it. But 

 marble was still only "white stone" for them 5 in other words, a stone of 

 greater beauty and greater consistency than limestone, offering in 

 these very qualities greater advantages to the architect and the sculp- 

 tor. The use of this new material did not at once cause old habits to 

 be abandoned; polychromy does not disappear; it is only somewhat 

 changed. A safe instinct warns sculptors that this close and highly 

 polished grain, this warm transparency, this gentle glow, must all con- 

 tribute to the beauty of artistic work, and that the problem which they 

 have to solve is, how to conciliate the exigencies of the material with 

 those of color. This problem archaic masters are bent upon solving, 

 and they do it with as much good taste as decisiveness. 



We are nowadays perfectly well informed as to the painting of 

 archaic marble statues, and, to speak only of the most widely known 

 discoveries, the excavations on the Acropolis of Athens have revealed 

 it to us in unexpected accuracy. The statues of women, gathered 

 together in the Museum of the Acropolis, are well known. These mar- 

 ble figures, which revive for us the contemporaries of the Pisistratides, 

 have often been described; their somewhat stiff attitudes have been 

 commented upon with some self-complacency; their gestures, appar- 

 ently regulated by a kind of coquettishuess,have been studied, as well as 

 their festive costumes, with their long, regular folds, and the cunning 

 arrangement of the hair. 1 The minute carefulness of the execution 

 warns us that the art of working in marble has now reached its highest 

 technical perfection, and that any progress to be made hereafter can 

 only be a progress in style. The artists who have carved these statues, 

 between 520 and 480, are sure of their chisels, as the painters who 

 decorate them are sure of their principles. Polychromy now follows 

 established rules and no longer proceeds by experiments. We may 

 therefore choose an example which will save us long descriptions, and 

 examine, from among the statues of the Acropolis, one of those that 

 has preserved most valuable traces of having been painted. 2 Let us 

 look first at the head, with its hair curiously wrought in detail by the 

 chisel; curls are rising stage upon stage in front, tresses are flowing 

 down upon the breast, a mass of hair is spread out over the shoulders 

 in one large sheet, as it were, marked with regular undulations. In 



1 The most complete account of this subject will he found in Mr. Lechat's articles 

 in the Bulletin de correspondance hellenique 1890, pages 301-362, 552-586. The same 

 author has very closely examined the polychromy of statues, and I only sum up here 

 his conclusions. 



2 This is the statue which is represented on PI. Ill of the Musees d'Athenes. A 

 colored plate, published in the Antike Denkmaler I, PL XXXIX, gives the colors of 

 the costumes. 



