There was a statue of Augustus of amber ; and at the celebration of funeral ceremonies, as those in honour of Sulla, statues were some times made of gum and aromatics, as well as of other materials of the most combustible nature, as, for instance, of hay. Among the strange conceits of artists there is mention of a statue of the goddess of Love made of loadstone, which attracted a Mars of iron.
The union, or rather, combination of different marbles in the same work was called polylahic sculpture. When painting or colouring was resorted to, it was termed rolychromic sculpture. These mixtures, which modern taste disapproves, were resorted to by the most cele brated artists of antiquity, and during the most flourishing period of sculpture and architecture hi Greece. The various architectural members of their temples were picked out in red and blue ; and the backgrounds, and frequently parts also of the sculpture itself, especi ally of rilievi, were coloured, to give further effect to the design. There can be no doubt that the peculiar circumstances of the climate must materially affect the appearance of this kind of decoration. What in the dull atmosphere of northern countries would, at the best of times, appear either dingy or tawdry, might easily be imagined to have a very different effect when seen clearly defined and relieved against a cloudless blue sky, and by the bright glare of a southern sun. The combination, under such favourable circumstances, of white marble, of which the temples were usually constructed, with simple though brilliant colours to indicate the mouldings or smaller members of the architecture and sculpture, sparkling with gold ornaments, certainly offers to the fancy a spectacle of surpassing splendour. It is not quite so easy to reconcile with our notions of propriety or good taste the mixture of materials for sculpture within buildings, where space, and sometimes light, if the temple were not open in the roof, would be wanting to dissipate the heaviness of effect which it is conceived such works would have. The introduction of foreign substances, either metal, precious stones, paste or glass, for eyes in statues and busts (of which examples occur in works even of the best period of art), is a species of barbarism that is quite unaccountable, and which the most zealous admiration of the genius of the Greeks cannot qualify or excuse. Such instances may however be considered exceptions to the rule of pure taste and simple feeling which is exhibited in the greater number of works by the sculptors of Greece ; and modern experience will probably afford the best solution of what would otherwise seem an anomaly, by suggesting that the artists, even of those times, were occasionally dictated to, and their own better taste overruled by the caprice of their employers. It seems difficult to account otherwise for the strange circumstance of the lips as well as the eyes being inlaid. There is more than one example of this among the fine bronzes pre served at Naples.
Inscriptions were sometimes inserted into bronze statues ; the letters being of a different metal from the figure. Cicero (` In Verr.,' Orat. iv.) speaks of an Apollo inscribed with the name of Myron. In the collection at Paris is a statue of a youth in bronze, on the left foot of which are the remains of two Greek words, AOANAIA . GEKATAN,
in silver letters.
There was a very peculiar combination, rather referred to than described by ancient authors, by which shades or tints of colour were produced. Plutarch (` Symp.,' lib. v.) says that the sculptor Silanion made a statue of Jocasta, the wife of Loins, king of Thebes, in which she was represented dying. To increase the intensity of the expres sion of the countenance, the artist by an ingenious mixture of the metals of which the statue was composed, bad produced a pallid appearance. This, he says, was effected by the addition of silver. Callistrattui admires a bronze statue of Cupid by Pmxiteles, for its elegant position, for the arrangement of the hair, its smile, the fire in its eyes, and, he adds, there was in its countenance a vivid blush. He observes the same thing, and with equal admiration and astonishment, of a statue by Lysippus. After describing the work generally, he says, the cheeks were coloured like the rose, and those who saw it were struck with surprise at seeing the bronze imitate the appearance of nature. The same remarkable effect is noticed in a bronze statue of Bacchus by Praxiteles. To these maybe added a statue of Athamas at Delphi, mentioned by Pliny. He was represented sitting after the murder of his son Learchus, whom he had precipitated from a rock. This work, he says, was not entirely of iron ; for the artist, Aristonidas, wishing to express the effect of confusion and remorse in the counte nance of the king, used a mixture of iron and bronze, which should imitate in some measure the blush of shame. (PIM., Hist. Nat.,' xxxiv. 14.) Other notices might be quoted of this practice of the ancients. The writers who refer to these effects describe them as the result of study and intention on the part of the artists, and do not allow us to suppose that the mere accident of oxidation and decom position produced them. The art seems to be quite distinct from that called tarmac ; the latter being the union of distinct materials, easily removable, while the former is described as effecting an amalgama tion which produced shades or tints. The few writers who speak of it are certainly general in their observations, and give no technical details of the manner of effecting these combinations ; but this hardly justifies the entire rejection of their testimony as to what they saw. It is most probable that they coloured the statues after they were cast, as Pliny says was done in Egypt (vexiii. 9). The different compart ments and objects in the shield of Achilles (` Iliad,' xviii.) are described as exhibiting different colours. This however, whether the passage be Homeric and genuine, or interpolated at a later though ancient period, may have been a specimen of toreutic art. That the ancient sculptors increased, or imagined they increased, the effect of their produc tions in marble by adding colour, not only tradition but existing monuments testify. It is therefore net only possible but highly pro bable that they had some process with which we are unacquainted, by which they were able to produce some similar eflects in their metal works.