POLYCHROMY, p'611-kremi, literally the use of many colors and generally used in the sense of decorative work by means of brilliant coloring or that which is brilliant in compari son with other work of the same class and character. Thus a fitting together of building stones in patterns is polychromy, although the hues of the sandstone or limestone or marble are not positive nor strangly contrasted with one another. In French Romanesque architecture, as also in modern imitations of it, like Trinity Church, Boston. Mass., the sandstones are of two or three different shades of reddish brown,.
and an additional hue approaching buff ; and yet this very moderate degree of contrast, when used deliberately in pattern, is called poly chromy. On the other hand, polychromatic painting is always assumed to be in primary col ors, or those which nearly approach them in brilliancy. Thus the painting of a Grecian Doric temple in the 5th century A.D. is known to have been in great measure carried out in the unmixed natural pigments as strong and pure as they could be procured; red and deep blue, with a free use of metallic gold in the form of gilt, bronze or the like, and the rather frequent introduction of such secondary colors as green and purple.
Color effects in architecture are as ancient as architecture itself. It never seems to have oc curred to an Egyptian builder to leave his lime stone walls unadorned with polychromatic ef fects, nor to the sculptor engaged in carving re lids on those walls or statues to set up against them, that such human and animal forms could ever be left in the natural color of the stone. Sculpture was always completed by the paint brush except in those cases where, chiefly for display or in the spirit of sacrifice, there was used a very costly and very hard material of some importance in its own surface and color. Thus an Egyptian statue of diorite or basalt, or a Roman statue of the imperial epoch wrought in black marble, or a portrait bust with the head and neck of white marble inserted into the draped shoulders. and torso wrought in the most precious Oriental alabaster or beautiful veined marble from Greece or Numidia, would not bepainted; and any polychromy that would be added by hand would be in the nature of gilding applied to the hair or the ornaments. So the bronze statue, highly esteemed for its material, which was always accepted as superior to marble or other nat ural stone, would receive eyes of hard natural stone or of glass, and perhaps gilding as mentioned above, but nothing more. On the other hand, some modern work in experi mental polychromy has been carried further; thus the statues and busts of Charles Henri Cordier have been adorned with enamel applied freely to articles of costume, to the harp of an Egyptian harp-player, in addition to the approx imation of the natural color of skin and of drapery. In the Paris Exposition of 1900 there were exquisite statuettes wrought in the pre cious materials, onyx, agate, alabaster and the like, with bronze of many colors or in other cases in carved and stained ivory. The most
impressive piece of work of this kind was the statue by Ernest Barrias, 'Nature Unveiling Herself,' a statue somewhat larger than life, of which the whole lower part, representing the body from the bust downward with a drapery, is wrought of a single block of marble of un usual beauty — a superb piece of red and purple veining— while the breast and shoulders, arms and head, are in white marble, the hair and eyes being stained and the veil is of a natural stone of a delicate buff or perhaps greenish yellow tinge.
Polychromy in painting has not been so coin monly used in modern times. For some reason painting, when applied in merely flat and 'un changing masses, is looked on with some con tempt by modern decorators; and the artist who controls a more complete skill, whose painted work is characterised by all the art of grada tion and harmony known to the modern world, abstains front doing such purely decorative work. It was not so in antiquity, 'for while no fragment remains to us of the highest develop ment of chromatic effect in sculpture, on the other hand there were no texts more intelligible than those which set forth the practice of em ploying painters of name and fame to adorn with color the works of the sculptors. An early but most interesting example of what this work must have been is seen in the draped statue dis covered on the Acropolis in 1883 and 1886. The color is disappearing rapidly; but when it was taken from the ground it was brilliant. The outer garment (himation or peplos) has in every case a rich border of two or three con trasting hues; the larger surfaces of the stuff are shown as covered with a pattern in spots or small foliated figures; and the under gar ment (chiton), where visible, is often painted in a strong, deep green, which was probably in the first plice more nearly blue. Hair, eyes, lips and all the jewelry shown, such as ear rings, are treated separately and with what seems to have been a free use of gilding.
The great masters of polychromy are, how ever, the Persians and the civilized races of Asia generally. Beauty of pattern is especially the Persian gift; but this merit is shared by the people of the Indian Peninsula and by the Chinese and the Japanese, and in a lesser de gree by the Malays and the inhabitants of farther India. Even the peoples of very low civilization in the north, the original inhabitants of Siberia, showed a marked gift in the arrang ing of decorative patterns. Both the Japanese and Chinese use polychrozny in their larger works, temples and the like, with great freedom and with perfect success; the Japanese limiting brilliant effects rather to the interior and to special details of the exterior, while the Chinese had at one time the great art of polychromatic building, using their enameled potteries with perfect freedom.