274 ATHENS. 
make a picture, as a tailor to cut out a suit of 
clothes: the only essential requisite is a good 
set of patterns, and these are handed from 
father to son. Hence we learn the cause of 
that remarkable stiffness and angular outline 
which characterize all the pictures in the Greek 
churches: the practice is very antient; and 
although the works of some Greek painters, 
which yet remain, enable us to prove that 
there were artists capable of designing and 
drawing in a more masterly manner, yet it is 
highly probable that the pictures of the Antients 
were often of this description. Whoever atten- 
tively examines the paintings upon terra-cotta 
vases, executed in the style called Monochromatic ', 
MI i -IT 
Painting will be convinced that such a process was used ; 
only with this difference: the parts for the 
picture were either left bare, being covered by 
the pattern, and the whole surface of the vessel 
which remained exposed was coated with black 
paint; or, cavities being cut out for the figures, 
were filled with the black or white colour, and 
the rest of the vase possessed the natural hue of 
the clay after being baked. The latter process 
(l) " Secundam singulis coloribus, et mmiochromalon dictam, post- 
qiiara operosior iuventa erat." Plin. Hiet. Nat. lib. xxxv. c. 3^ 
torn. HI. p. 417. L. Bat. 1635. 
malic 
Paint 
