Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/227

 Pkimitivk Greece : Mycenian Art. have preserved bits of ancient painting. Such would be a quaint specimen from a grave at Amorgos {Fig. 332),' which we engrave below. The eyes are painted black ; red strokes give the nose, cheeks, and forehead. A semi-circle, more polished than the rest of the surface, surrounds the top of the head ; the space was in all probability painted brown to represent the hair. So too, from another grave at Amorgos, comes a figure whose head preserves scraps of colour.- The question has been raised whether we should not infer from the lines seen about these figures that the tribes which Kic. 331.— Marble heads of idols. Heighl, o in,, 19. fashioned them practised tattooing, or at any rate painted their faces and parts of the body. Patterns traced, or rather punctured, with a pointed instrument on the shoulder and the right arm of one of these statuettes, where they form a quadruple chevron, and a ma:ander on the left arm (Fig. 330), would seem to confirm the conjecture. The usage has ever been and is even now widely diffused among savage peoples. We learn from classic historians and poets that in their day the habit was still popular with the Thracians. It is self-evident that when the ceramists of a later age put dashes of paint on Orpheus, whom they pictured torn by infuriated Thracian women, ' WoLTERS, Marmorkopf aus Amor^s. - Ibid,