Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/184

 l68 THESEUM, ERECHTHEUM, AND OTHER WORKS. Probably the idea of pillar figures came from Egypt. In the Museum there are also fragments of the anta (No. 411) and of the inner architrave of the prostasis of the maidens. One of the most singular characteristics of this peculiar building was the use of coloured materials other than painting. At Olympia a black marble pavement was laid in front of the statue, and in the Propylsea the lowest course of the wall was in dark Eleusinian marble. At the Erechtheum this same stone was used for the fields of the pediment and for the friezes. To the latter, figures of small scale of white marble were pinned so that they appeared on a nearly black background. The figures themselves must have been brightly painted and gilt. Gold for the eyes of the volutes and for certain flowers — pro- Fig. 167. — The Erechtheum Capitals. bably of bronze in the coffers of the lacunaria — appears in the accounts. The capitals have a guilloche band under the cushion. The eyes of this plait are drilled out and set, Inwood says, " with different coloured stones or glass " — black and very light blue in the first row, yellow and dark blue in the second, and black and light blue again in the third. This seems so extraordinary for Greek work that I have been glad to find an independent account with a coloured drawing of this decoration in the Greek and Roman Department. This is a copy of a memorandum by Donaldson, entitled " Disposition of the Coloured Glass Beads in the Interlacing Ornament in the Capitals of the Tetrastyle Portico : Copy of F. L. D. The base was ornamented in the same manner.' The careful drawing shows purple and bright blue in the first and