ATHENS. 275 
was the more antient; and vases of this de- 
scription are decorated with black, or very rarely 
with white, figures and ornaments upon a red 
ground. The fact is, that the white colour has 
been generally decomposed, and nothing remains 
but the ground upon which it was laid. After a 
vase has been discovered in an antient sepulchre, 
the white colour is so fugitive that it is some- 
times carried off by the mere process of wash- 
ing the vessel in common water, and it never 
resists the acids which are used for that purpose. 
The persons who deal in these antiquities, at 
Naples and in other parts of Italy, very com- 
monly retouch and restore their vases, adding 
a little white paint where the white colour has 
disappeared. The monochromatic paintings of 
the Antients sometimes consisted of white colour 
upon a red or black ground : this style of 
painting was expressed by the word Xsy^oy^a^v 2 . 
The most beautiful of the monochromatic paintings 
are v those which were executed upon earthen 
vases when the Arts were considerably advanced : 
(2) (Ariitot. Poet. c.6. See also Winkelmann Hist, de FArt, 
torn. II. p. 141. Paris, An 2.) Sometimes a red colour was singly 
applied upon a white ground ; in which style of painting four pictures 
were found in Herculanenm : and, lastly, there were monochromatic 
paintings with a black colour upon a red ground j as upon the terra- 
cotta vases. 
T2 
