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the bas-reliefs dedicated by victorious athletes in the shrine of Amphiaraus at Oropus; the painting of three actors in tragic costume, which is commonly interpreted as an illustration of the 'Hippolytus' of Euripides, doubtless reproduces a votive picture dedicated by a successful choregus; and the scene in which the fate of Niobe and her daughters is brought before our eyes may likewise be regarded as an offering commemorating a theatrical contest, since it is well known that in the classical period an idealised representation of dramatic subjects was usually chosen for such a purpose.* This group of paintings thus bears the stamp of an age when the chief end of art was not as yet that of ministering to private luxury.

Is it possible, we may now ask, that the frescoes of Rome and Pompeii may add somewhat to the scanty knowledge of early Greek painting which we have gathered from the works just described? The technique of ancient fresco-painting was so far different from that practised in modern times, that works originally executed in a different process would lose but little of their effect by this method of translation. Vitruvius has preserved for us a minute account of the practice followed in ancient wall-decoration; and its accuracy has been confirmed by the observation of extant frescoes as well as by modern experiment. He prescribes the use of no less than six coats of plaster, the first three roughly rendered in cement made with sand and lime, the last three of marble pounded with increasing fineness; and each of these coats was carefully levelled and dried before the next was applied. The last, when it had received the tone required for the background of the painting, was highly polished; and the picture was then executed in colours mixed with lime and thickly laid on, so thickly in fact that, as a cursory examination of the walls of Pompeian houses will show, the figures often seem to stand out in relief from the polished background.

The result of this elaborate process was that there was little difference in effect between painting in fresco and the other technical methods known to the ancients,

* The well-known bas-reliefs, consisting of three figures, of which the most famous is the 'Parting of Orpheus and Eurydice' in the Villa Albani, seem to have been votive offerings set up by successful choregi.

whether tempera, for which the usual medium was fig-sap mingled with the yolk of an egg, or encaustic, in which the pigments were mixed with melted wax. The modern fresco-painter finds his chief hindrance in the rapid drying of the plaster, which compels him to paint against time and to cover with finished work so much of the surface to be decorated as suffices for a day's labour; for retouching can only be done in tempera, unless the artist be willing to sacrifice the labour which he has spent and to renew the plaster. These difficulties existed in a far less degree for the ancient fresco-painter, who could work for several days in succession on the field prepared for decoration, laying on his pigments in very much the same manner as the artist who employed a medium of greater consistency. There has recently been published an interesting account of the experimental process by which Böcklin was led to rediscover some of the secrets of this lost technique; and there can be no doubt that much may yet be learnt by modern painters from the study of ancient wall-paintings.

Bearing in mind what has just been said, we might well hope to find in the existing frescoes of Rome and Pompeii some which would give us a rendering, not altogether inadequate, of the technical qualities of those originals which, in the schools of academic criticism and connoisseurship, were exalted as models of classical perfection. If, however, we approach the extant wallpaintings in the hope of finding materials for the history of ancient painting in its earlier developments, we shall be sorely disappointed. There is but a handful of subjects to which we can point as illustrating the art of pre-Alexandrian times. In the house discovered on the edge of the Tiber in the grounds of the Villa Farnesina, some walls are adorned with imitations of framed pictures with a white background, perhaps intended to represent marble. The subjects are simple-for example, a woman seated and playing on the lyre, with an attendant standing before her-and the severity of treatment, recalling that of the Attic grave-reliefs, points to early originals. Like the painting of the knucklebone-players, these works are the product of a time when line rather than colour was the artist's vehicle of expression; but they have none of the grace of the Herculaneum marble, and are

chiefly of interest as indicating the taste of the Roman connoisseur. Superior to these in execution is a group of frescoes from Herculaneum, preserved in the museum at Naples, one of which represents the adornment of a bride, while others depict scenes from the drama and may be classed with the votive paintings mentioned above. But neither these nor any other of the frescoes discovered in Campania can be regarded as direct copies of the masterpieces of early Greek art.

It was once believed (for example, by Helbig) that a painting of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, found in the house of the poet at Pompeii, reproduced a famous work by Timanthes, a contemporary of Zeuxis, who lived towards the close of the fifth century B.C.; and even in the latest handbook of the Naples Museum it is suggested that the influence of the Greek artist may be traced in the composition, even though some figures may have been added by the Pompeian wall-painter. Such a view cannot, however, be upheld. It has nothing in its favour but the bare fact that Agamemnon is represented with veiled and averted countenance-a motive which Pliny ascribes to Timanthes, but which no doubt became traditional in the ancient schools of painting. It has recently been observed that the spirit and perhaps the composition of Timanthes' masterpiece are more faithfully preserved in the bas-reliefs of the altar in the Uffizi signed by the neo-Attic sculptor Cleomenes. Here we seem to breathe the atmosphere of the fifth century B.C. The veiled figure of Agamemnon is not wanting; and the central group of figures-Calchas, Iphigenia, and the youth who leads her to sacrifice-is composed with all the dignity and reserve of the 'Parting of Orpheus and Eurydice,' to which reference has already been made. The Pompeian painting, which shows Iphigenia half nude, borne in the arms of two attendants and uplifting her arms in mute appeal to her heavenly protector, Artemis, who appears in the clouds, is conceived in the sensuous and melodramatic spirit of the late Alexandrian age.

Once again, it is held by many scholars that in the socalled 'Aldobrandini Marriage,' reproduced in Plate II, we have a direct copy of a composition belonging to the classical period of Greek painting. This fresco, which once decorated the upper portion of a wall in a private

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