612 POLYCHROMY IN GREEK STATUARY. 



patterns of Oriental stuffs — the tunics and their solid ground, purple, 

 blue, or red, embroidered with little squares or ornamented with an inser- 

 tion of a different color, the facing contrasting with the sleeves, the 

 sleeves with the mantles, the trousers striped, dotted, or dappled some- 

 times in three shades, the saddlecloths with their brilliant braids and 

 their figured embroideries — but more than that, he excels in the delicate 

 art to please the eye by very sharp contrasts, and yet to harmonize the 

 colors." 1 jSTor is polychromy here limited to the clothes and their acces- 

 sories. The heads, with their brownish-red hair, the eyes, in which the 

 iris is always carefully indicated as blue or brown, have a marked life- 

 like expression. The head of Alexander in the scene from the lion hunt 

 is worth examining as proving our assertion; his eye, fixed upon the 

 animal which is biting the chest of one of his horses, has all the inten- 

 sity, all the energy which a painter could have wished to express in a 

 painting. Take, moreover, this essential fact which is productive of 

 weighty consequences. The difficult question of coloring uncovered parts 

 is made quite clear by positive evidence. The bare parts were covered 

 up " with a kind of light and transparent rubbing in of uniform density, 

 light or dark yellow, according as the subject was a Greek or a barba- 

 rian, without any effort to reproduce the varying aspect of flesh and 

 blood by a variety of shades. These glazings are so different from the 

 even, opaque, and consistent tints which are applied to parts of the 

 drapery, and time has so successfully gnawed away the fluid veil that at 

 first sight one might imagine nothing was there but the natural marble, 

 gilt by the years." Thus, about the year 320, far from having lost ground, 

 polychromy had rather improved and progressed, and if new evidence 

 were needed to prove this, abundance of it would be found in. the other 

 monuments discovered at Sidon; the painted friezes of the sarcophagus 

 of the female mourners would furnish an additional argument. All 

 these facts combined lead us to the conclusion that there were laws, or, 

 if we prefer it, established customs, that regulated polychromy for bas- 

 reliefs. In the first place, the decorators did not abandon opaque colors ; 

 on the contrary, they used them freely. As to bare parts, they solved 

 the problem as above mentioned; they employ for them a colored glaz- 

 ing that is transparent and allows the grain of the marble to show, while 

 it tempers the whiteness which they thought too glaring. Finally, we 

 do not notice at this period, more than at any more remote date, any 

 doubtful tints, nor any modeling by color. It is the prominent parts 

 of the bas-relief alone which give to the lights their effect and to the 

 shadows their intensity. The painter has nothing to do with modeling; 

 he only colors with solid tints the sculptured surfaces which have iu 

 themselves their own jday of lights and shadows. 



Relying upon such very precise indications, we may with tolerable 

 safety turn to the most important question — the painting of statues. 



'The Sidon sarcophagi in the Museum at Constantinople, Gazette des Beaux 

 Arts, 1892. 



