POLYCHEOMY IN GREEK STATUARY. 621 



more intensity to the look is not anterior to the time of Hadrian, and 

 this is a proof that polychromy is now beginning to abdicate. There 

 can be no donbt that here, more than elsewhere, the individual senti- 

 ment of the painter found an opportunity to assert itself. An art as 

 refined as that of the fourth century must have been more or less 

 exacting, and if we look at statues like those of Praxiteles we become 

 aware that the very structure of the eye, slightly veiled beneath the 

 lid, warned the painter not to fall into brutal realism. In order to 

 solve the difficulty, we may have to go back to the many colored head 

 of the British Museum, in which the upper eyelid, cutting the circle of 

 the apple of the eye, strangely softens the expression of the eye. But 

 can we ever divine what charm the coworker of Praxiteles, so renowned 

 for his women's portraits, may have succeeded in giving to the look of 

 a marble Aphrodite? 



Still, an objection presents itself here. We have before us the mod- 

 eling of the hair, the eyes, no doubt also that of the lips, improved by 

 colors applied with more or less delicacy, but always consistent enough 

 to contrast with the tint of the marble, which is left untouched for all 

 the bare parts. Is this not a shocking contrast? Will not the colors 

 stand out with a certain crudeness? And do not the Jaws of harmony 

 which the eye of a Greek perceives with such rare accuracy, impose 

 upon the artist the duty of softening these violent contrasts, of sub- 

 duing somewhat the too striking whiteness of the marble and to change 

 it to a warmer scheme of colors? Here we come to a question that has 

 been much discussed — the coloring of naked parts. Whether we admit 

 it or not — and opinions are divided on this subject — one fact remains 

 certain, the statue underwent a kind of treatment which restored the 

 harmony between the parts that had been painted and those that the 

 painter's brush had not yet touched. Thanks to written testimony, we 

 know the details of this operation perfectly well. According to what 

 Vitruvius says, it is the same which painters in encaustics practiced in 

 order to give greater brilliancy to their painting, very much as we var- 

 nish a picture: "When the wall has been well polished and is very 

 dry, we apply with a brush, made of pigs' bristles, a layer of Punic 

 wax, melted before the fire and mixed with a little oil; then we heat the 

 wall by means of charcoal kept in a chafing dish, until the wax melts 

 and enters into the painting. Finally, the whole is rubbed with wax 

 and clean linen, as we do with marble statues that are waxed." This 

 is the operation which the Greeks call yavwaiz} Other texts confirm 

 the testimony of Vitruvius. The inventories of the temples of Delos 

 allude to the Koffiujffi? of statues of Artemisia and Hera: This is an 

 operation resembling the ydvcoffib, and consists in "spreading over the 

 surface a coating to make it even, to polish it, to render it shining, or to 

 color it, 2 or to wash it with certain substances which give it brilliancy 



l This question is well treated by Henry Gros and Charles Henry in L'Encaustique 

 et les autres procede's chez les Ancions. Paris : Librairie de l'Art, 1884. 

 -Honiolle, Bulletin de correspondance fcellemque, XI V, 1890, page 497. 



