Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/185

 THESEUM, ERECHTHEUM, AND OTHER WORKS. 169 third rows, and yellow and purple in the middle. (Fig. 168.) Donaldson extracted some of these glass beads and brought them to England. The note goes on to say of the capitals that, " The sinking round the volute was painted red. Yet this is supposed to have received an ornament of bronze. The iron nails still remain which " [were inserted in the volute]. Donaldson's remark about the deep spiral groove refers to Inwood, who found in them "bronze nails inserted with lead, forking out as shown [Y], and others on the plait ornament, by which some additional decoration of bronze was fixed." This has been amplified into the statement that there was a bronze fillet ending in a palmette, filling the spandrel between the volute and the cushion. Comparison with the other cap found in the Erechtheum (Fig. 169), the capital of the Nereid monument (Fig. 178), and above all with the capitals of the late temple of Augustus and Rome,* which are an exact copy of those of the Erechtheum, shows that absence of a palmette is characteristic Fig. 168.— Detail of Plait inlaid of all of them, as has been re- with Glass, marked by Puchstein. Watkiss Lloyd noticed red paint in the deep groove of the capitals of the Nereid monument such as Donaldson observed on the Erechtheum capital. This was, I doubt not, the original decoration, and " the bronze nails " were probably for suspending garlands. Besides this use of coloured material, the usual painted decoration was added. Traces of red colour remain on the back- ground of the anta and course of palmette ornamentation. The sofifit of the lacunaria was decorated with frets (Inwood, plate 20), and Donaldson says that the mouldings had painted eggs and tongues, and that the faces of the beams also appeared to be coloured. It is said that paint has been found also in the flutes of the columns. {^&q Journal of the R.I.B.A., vols. i. and ii.) One or two points in the design and construction may be
 * Is the drum of a column at the Museum, No. 446, from this temple ?