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on the colours used in painting by the Ancients. 
Sinopide Pontica, ex nigris atramento, Apelles, Echion, Melan- 
thius, Nicomachus, clarissimi pictores but as far as Apelles 
and Nicomachus are concerned, this is a mistake: and it 
is not unlikely that Pliny was misled by an imperfect recol- 
lection of a passage in Cicero, who describes the earlier 
Greek school as using only four colours ; but the later 
Greek painters as perfect masters in all the resources of 
colouring. “ Similis in pictura ratio est : in qua Zeuxim, et 
Polygnotum, et Timantem, et eorum, qui non sunt usi plus 
quarri quatuor coloribus, formas et lineamenta laudamus : at 
in Aetione, Nicomacho, Protogene, Apelle, jam perfecta sunt 
omnia/' Cicero, Brutus, seu de claris oratoribus,c. 18. Pliny 
himself describes with enthusiasm the Venus dvuSuopsvv} of 
Apelles : and in this picture the sea was represented, which 
required azure. 
The great Greek painters, like the most illustrious artists 
of the Roman and Venetian school, were probably, however, 
sparing in the use of the more florid tints in historical and 
moral painting, and produced their effects rather by the con- 
trasts of colouring in those parts of the picture where a deep 
and uniform tint might be used, than by brilliant drapery. 
If red and yellow ochres, blacks and whites, were the colours 
most employed by Protogenes and Apelles, so they are like- 
wise the colours most employed by Raphael and Titian in 
their best style. The St. John and the Venus, in the tribune 
of the Gallery at Florence, offer striking examples of pictures 
in which all the deeper tints are evidently produced by red and 
yellow ochres, and carbonaceous substances. 
As far as colours are concerned, these works are prepared 
for that immortality which they deserve ; but unfortunately 
* Lib. xxxv. c. 32. 
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