Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/71

 50 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. The colours of this rock, nearly always bright and varied, are seen in great masses above ground ; their effect in the landscape is that of a richly-coloured decoration, put there in a broad grand manner by a master-painter. This concert made up of tints becomes still more harmonious and brilliant when oak and pine forests lean against marble walls, or when, out of a moist cleft in the rock, there bursts forth a wealth of greenery such as is only seen in southern latitudes, in the neighbourhood of some spring which summer itself is powerless to quench. If the shapes, in some sort monumental, and the sober and severe colouring which everywhere greet us on Grecian soil, helped on the pro- gress of the arts of drawing, the actual composition of the rocks that make the land what it is, was no insignificant factor in bring- ing this about. As these rocks became disintegrated, they formed on many a spot excellent plastic clay, equally suitable to supplying the mason with bricks and tiles or complacently lending itself to be modelled by the potter or carved by the sculptor s hands ; such rocks as preserved intact their hardness and compactness, everywhere furnished the builder with materials of unequal value, but all of which, with a little care, might be made to serve his ambitious needs. The fact that in many localities limestone was the sole building material he had to hand, taught him to overlay it and conceal its defects under a coating of coloured plaster. In the future he will receive a different kind of teaching from fine stone, such as that quarried in the neighbourhood of Piraeus ; then will be formed the habit of aiming at precision of cut and fineness of joint, of imparting rhythmic arrangement to his units and firm accent to his mouldings. It is on account of these merits that a fragment of Hellenic wall, kept in its place by overgrowth, has a certain inherent beauty of its own which appeals to everybody with a feeling for order and able to appreciate finish in work. These qualities will be carried further when he introduces a much finer grained material, marble, into his buildings ; a material he will handle with rever- ence, conscious all the while that none of his intentions, not a stroke of his chisel, will be lost upon it ; marble will give him a taste for nicety of manipulation which he will carry to the extreme of perfection in the works destined to grace his own Acropolis at Athens, of which all experts are enamoured. Then, too, marbles are not all of one colour ; sooner or later their