POLYCHROMY IN GREEK STATUARY. ^13 



Here the problem becomes more difficult. We have to deal with iso- 

 lated works, made for their own purposes aud having no connection 

 with architecture. The question mainly concerns plastic creations, 

 which according to our modern ideas require nothing but form in order 

 to give them all their great value and their peculiar accent. It has 

 long been thought that the chisel of Scopas and Praxiteles gave to 

 the marble sufficient life to convey by the modeling alone the passion- 

 ate outbursts of the "Maenade with the Kid,' 1 or the perfect beauty of 

 the "Cnidian.' 1 And is it not really a barbarous idea to attempt con- 

 cealing, even under the slightest touch of coloring, the exquisite deli- 

 cacy of the marble as it has been shaped by the chisel of great Greek 

 masters"? 



We would not dare assert that the polychromy of statues has been 

 an absolute, inflexible rule, and that it rigorously bound all artists 

 alike. But if the facts are conclusive, we must needs accept it, if not 

 as a law, at least as a custom, to which the taste of antiquity submitted 

 gracefully. Now, we find at the very outset in the written evidence 

 many reasons to overcome our doubts. The principal texts which in 

 any way allude to the painting of statues have long since been collected 

 and commented upon, and we ought to bear in mind that they spread 

 over a very long period, from the fourth century before our era to a 

 very advanced date in the times of the Emperors. 1 Greek statuary is 

 in its full splendor when Plato writes as follows: "If we were to paint 

 statues and some one were to come and object that we do not employ 

 the most beautiful colors for the most beautiful parts of the body ; that, 

 for instance-, we do not paint the eyes vermilion, but black, we should 

 think we had answered the censor very well by saying to him : l Do not 

 think that we ought to paint eyes so beautifully that they cease to be 

 eyes ; and what I say of this part of the body must be understood of the 

 others likewise.' " Pliny has preserved a saying attributed to Praxiteles 

 and evidently taken from Greek sources. When the great artist was 

 asked which of his marble statues he valued most highly, he replied: 

 "Those which have been in the hands of the painter Nicias!" And 

 Pliny adds: "So great was the importance which he attached to the 

 work (circumlitio) of Mcias!" This cooperation of painter and sculp- 

 tor ought not to surprise us; we meet with its equivalent in the days 

 of the Italian renaissance. Thus Lorenzo di Credi aud Gosimo Eoselli 

 painted the sculptures of Benedetto da Majano, 2 and in the studio of 

 the painter JSTeri-Bicci they were coloring "plaster or marble madon- 

 nas, works of good masters." 3 Let us go deeper in this line of evi- 

 dence. Inscriptions found at Delos give us a detailed account of the 



^See especially Christian Walz: Ueber die Polycliromie du antiken Skulptur. 

 Tubingen, 1853, and Bliimmer: Techuologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und 

 Kiinste, III, page 120 and ft". 



2 Muntz: Histoire de Tart pendant la Renaissance, II, page 462. 



"'Courajod: La polychromie dans la statnaire du moyen age et de la renaissance. 

 Extract des Memoires de la Societe des Antiquaires de France, page 65. 



