POLYCHROMY IN GREEK STATUARY. 611 



exposure to the air." We know, moreover, quite a numerous series of 

 stelie in which the bas-relief is replaced by painting- directly applied 

 to the marble, 1 and in monuments of careless workmanship as in cheap 

 stelae, a sketch is often found slightly engraved and intended to guide 

 the painter. We must, therefore, take it for granted that a Greek 

 necropolis, like that of the outside ceramic works at Athens, owed to the 

 polychromy of the monuments a much less stern aspect than that of 

 our cemeteries ; painted tombs, stelae adorned with colored reliefs formed 

 here long lines in picturesque perspective; the wanderer who stopped 

 before one of these beautiful bas-reliefs enjoyed here the charm of form 

 united to that of color, and if we wish to evoke the vision of an Attic 

 stela with its delicate polychromy, we should recall the painted stuccoes 

 of the Renaissance, and forget the stone or marble reliefs which adorn 

 the most luxurious of modern burial places. 



The most striking and the most conclusive example of polychromy 

 applied to bas-reliets happens to be a funeral monument. Before the 

 end of the fourth century a Greek sculptor, a contemporary of Alexander, 

 created that magnificent sarcophagus which Hamdy-Bey was so fortu- 

 nate as to discover in the necropolis of Sidon. This is the "Sarcopha- 

 gus of Alexander," now the most precious work in the Museum of the 

 Tchinily-Kios'k at Constantinople. 2 



We are not called upon hereto describe in detail the bas-reliefs which 

 so liberally cover the four sides of the huge coffin : an episode of a hunt 

 for panthers, a lion hunt, in which a Persian and a Greek, no doubt 

 Alexander, are the principal personages, a furious skirmish of cavalry 

 between Macedonian and Persian soldiers, a densely crowded composi- 

 tion, in which we meet again all the rush and the fury of the battle 

 scenes sculptured by contemporaries of Scopas, at Halicarnassus. In 

 spite of the interest we feel in these bas-reliefs, which are very justly 

 deemed to represent to us the beginning of historic sculpture in Greek 

 art, we can not stop for anything but the object of this essay. Now, 

 far from betraying a decline of polychromy, the "Sarcophagus of Alex- 

 ander" shows it to us more flourishing than ever; it has actually 

 gained new resources. Instead of the three or four tints which the 

 jiainters of the sixth century employed, the decorator now commands 

 a very rich palette, which includes violet, purple, blue, yellow, carmine 

 red, reddish brown, and perhaps dark-brown bister. Instead of timidly 

 limiting the field of painting, he lavishes solid colors, spreads them in 

 abundance over the tunics and fluttering cloaks, and disposes of this 

 greatly varied gamut with singular facility. "The man who illumi- 

 nated our sarcophagus," writes Mr. Theodor Reinach, "is a genuine 

 colorist; he not only imitates with minute accuracy the complicated 



'Milchofer, Gernalte Grabstelen, Athenische Mittheilungen, V, 1880. 



2 It has been reproduced in very beautiful heliogravures with a lithograpic plate in 

 the folio Atlas published by Hamdy-Bey and Theodor Reinach : Une ue"cropole royale 

 a Sidon. Paris, Leroux, 1892. 



