Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/286

 262 HISTORY OF ART IN PIICENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. making a little picture with a pediment above it. These steles were found in the necropolis of Sidon ; their remains are now in the Louvre. 1 It is true that they are later, perhaps a good deal later, than the Christian era ; but may we not suppose that the painters by whom they were executed did no more than continue a tradition dating back to the rise of Phoenician civilization ? The races from whom the Phoenicians took their first lessons made constant use of painted stucco. In Egypt especially every stele was painted. In Cyprus t he brush had to supply one part of the decoration entirely by itself; the lower part of one of those re- markable cippi, on which a pair of sphinxes are perched, has no ornament beyond a sort of scarf put in with red paint (Vol. I. Fig. i5i). 2 Now although the upper part of these steles betrays the influence of classic Greece, it is none the less certain that they must be at least three or four centuries older than those Sidonian tombstones on which the same process was used. We know, too, that the Egyptians and Cypriots painted their statues, an example which must have been followed in Syria. In those scanty fragments, cut from the local stones, which represent Phoenician sculpture strictly speaking, we have found no traces of colour, but in almost every case the surface is worn away. The sculpture of Cyprus is in better condition, and from the observa- tions we ourselves can make, still more from the evidence of those who saw the statues taken out of their long hiding-places in the soil, it appears to be certain that in Cyprus limestone figures were not painted all over as they were in Egypt ; colour was used with more discretion ; it was employed to add value to certain details. Spots of red are often to be found on the hair, on the beard, and in the centre of the eyeball ; 3 we may believe that the tint has changed with time ; it may be only a ground colour on which some darker but more fleeting hue was laid. Red is more in place on lips, where I have often seen it, especially on examples in the British Museum. Finally, large figures often have their robes edged with a band of red or blue ; there are even a few 1 REMAN, Mission, p. 380, plate xliii. Nos. 4-9. CLERMONT-GANNEAU, Stales peintes de Sidon {Gazette archeologique, 1877, p. 102, and plates xv. and xvi.). 2 See Vol. I. p. 221 n. 4. 3 DOELL, Die Sammlung Cesnola, p. 10. CESNOLA, Cyprus, p. 130. Pupils are never put in with the chisel. Wherever they occur at all they are circles of paint laid on the bare stone with the brush.