Under the Romans, sculpture was employed to an enormous extent in the decoration of tombs and sarcophagi, whole streets of such monuments being constructed, as, for example, on the Appian way. The result of the demand thus created was that sculp ture became a manufacture rather than an art, and attempts were made to supply by technical execution and mere mass what had been lost in thought and spirit. Relief was now applied, often by Greek artists resident in Italy, to purposes for which the Greeks, in their own land and in their better times, had rightly conceived it to be unsuited. Behind figures standing nearly free a second rank was introduced, and those numerous examples of a false style, still to be found in every gallery in Europe, were produced, the imitation of which afterwards led to such a lavish expenditure of artistic talent in Italy. The attempt which the Romans liad made to invade the province of painting, by means of sculpture, was carried still further by the Florentine artists of the 16th and 17th centuries. Not only were several rows of figures represented in perspective, but even landscape was introduced with a success which, in the hands of such artists as Ghiberti, was positively marvelous. If the highest perfection in the true plastic style of
relief was attained by Phidias in the metopes of the parthenon at Athens, a correspond. ing merit may be Claimed as regards the degenerate pictorial style by Ghiberti in the celebrated bronze doors of the baptistery of San Giovanni at Florence. Even Canova's reliefs partook to far too great an extent of the character of paintings in stone; and to Flaxman, and above all to Thonvaldsen, must be assigned the merit of restoring this style of art to its genuine and original principles. It is to be remembered, in studying the reliefs of classical times, that studiously as the Greeks avoided a pictorial conception of their subject, they did not eschew the use of color where it could be employed to heighten the effect of their reliefs. There is reason to believe that in many excellent examples the background was painted blue, and that the hems of the garments of the figures, and the like, were often colored or gilded.