PYRAMIDS OF DJIZA. 205 
resemblance which the style of colouring bears chap. 
to other examples which may be mentioned, l 1 , 
The statues of the Parthenon at Athens were 
originally painted and gilded'-; and however 
contrary the practice may seem to our notions 
of taste, a custom of painting statues, and of 
gilding the hair of images representing celestial 
beings, has continued, without intermission, from 
the age of Pericles and the golden-haired Apollos 
of Greece, down to the sera of those Italian artists 
who filled our old English churches with ala- 
baster monuments, where, besides the painted 
effigies of our ancestors % may be seen the 
figures of angels with gilded wings and gilded 
hair. But these are subjects which, to a writer 
(2) " Avant que ce marbre pr^cicux eftt ^t6 nettoy^, il conservoit 
des traces, Doti-seulement de la couleur encaustique dont, suivant 
I'usage des Grecs, on enduisoit la sculpture, niais encore d'une 
veritable peinture dont quelques parties ^toietit couvertes ; usage 
qui tieiit aux proc^d^s de renfance de I'art, dont il ne s'etoit pas en- 
core d^barra<;s^. Le foi^d 6U)\t bleu ; les cheveux et quelques parties 
du corjis ETOiENT DORES." /wy. Monumcns Antiques inedits. De- 
scription d'un Bos-Relief du Parthenon, par A. L. MilHn. Traces of 
gilding are still to be perceived on tbe hair of the Venus de Medicis. 
(3) A splendid raoiiumcnt of this kind, erected over the bodies of 
Z/or<f Surrey the Poet and his family, may be seen in Framlingham 
Church, Suffolk. Shnkspeare has fiiielj' availed himself of this prac- 
tice, in the image of Herntione (IP'tnter's Tale): 
"PAUL. O patience; 
The statue is but newly fii:t, tlic colimr 's 
Not dry _" 
