Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/314

 TiRYNS. 289 the wainscoting of certain apartments, and of timber had been the columns, for though all the stone bases are in position, not a single scrap of shaft or capital has been discovered. Even if we grant the simultaneous burning of all the timber not im- mediately in contact with the wall, it will hardly suffice to explain the radical change which the latter underwent. Here, as at Mycenae and Troy, wood beams laid longitudinally at fixed intervals between the courses constituted an important element of the wall. These timber pieces have of course been either carbonized by fire or destroyed by the weather ; but wherever the wall is in good preservation, the hollows they have left behind are filled with that surest of signs, charcoal and ashes. A wall made of stone, clay, and wood could not long have resisted the destructive effects of the atmosphere ; its aspect moreover would have been poor and mean in the extreme. Hence, with the exception of the circuit, both faces of the walls were overlaid, first with a coating of clay, so as to get an even surface, and next with a thin layer of lime some two centi- metres thick. This was smoothed over and painted. That the wall-paintings were executed on the moist plaster is certain, for here and there are little roughnesses caused by the brush whilst the lime was moist. Notwithstanding the work of destruction which went on here during thousands of years, there are very few rooms that have not preserved fragments more or less con- siderable of the original plastering. The old painting, however, has almost entirely disappeared, except in the women's hall, where faint outlines of the design, if not the colours, are still distinguishable. All the rest has been washed away by the rain which, as it fell on the height, trickled down on the roofless walls and destroyed their bright veil. Fragments of this stuccoed- decoration have mostly come from the apartments situated north- east of the bath-room, where they were discovered under a thick layer of rubbish ; this, by excluding the damp, helped to pre- serve their colours. The least damaged had their painted faces turned to the floor. Of these the most valuable have been sent to the Athenian Museum, where I examined them ; but the bulk of the fragments in question was left in the keeping of the custodian of the ruins. Mural-painting was by no means general, and would seem to have been reserved for the inner walls of the more important VOL. I. u