Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/102

 86 the rarthenon and its sculptures. Colour and Bronze. The structure and the sculptures were decorated by painting and by many accessories of bronze, which were doubtless gilt. One of the fullest accounts of the painting is given by Penrose, although his harsh colour prints must not be held to represent the original hues. Like Hittorff and others, he thought that the whole surface of the marble had first been given a general tint to reduce its high, hard lights, to an ivory tone. Probably this priming was of wax — " patinage a la cire " (Lechat). This treatment was found to have been used already when the Fig. 72. — Frieze : Waiting Magistrates. archaic statues discovered some twenty years ago on the Acropolis were wrought. Some of the smaller architectural members, and the back- grounds of the sculptures, were painted in plain, bright colours. The triglyphs and the mutules above them were coloured blue, the spaces between the latter were red, the guttse (according to L. Magne) were also red. The field of the pediment was pro- bably blue or red. At ^gina it was blue. The bands above and beneath the triglyphs had fret patterns ; the guttse band beneath each triglyph has a small palmette pattern. The cymatium had a larger palmette pattern. (Fig. 69.) In the squares at the angles of the cornice, between neighbouring mutules, were com- positions like the ornaments used by vase painters, one of which