POLYCHRO'MY is a modern term used to express the ancient practice of colouring statues and the exteriors of buildings. In Egypt it was at all times a universal custom to have recourse to colours in the decoration of architecture. As to the practice in Greece, it appears, from the remains of colour found upon ancient monuments, that the colouring was strictly confined to the ornamental parts —to the friezes, the metopes, and the tympana of the pediments. In later times amongst the Romans, in the times of Vitruvius and Pliny, the practice seems to have degenerated into a mere taste for gaudy colours, and to have been very general, as we see in the ruins of Pompeii, where however, occasionally, the Arabesque decorations upon the walls of the courts in the larger houses are very elegant.
Polychrome sculpture was quite as general amongst the Greeks as polychrome architec ture. The acrolithic and the chrysekphantine statues both home under this head. In the latter style were many of the most remarkable productions of ancient art: the Jupiter at Olympia, and the Minerva at Athens, by Phidias ; the Juno, at Argos, by Polycletus, and the at Epidaurus, by Thra sy-medes ; and others described by Pausanias.
In the flourishing period of Grecian art, custom seems also to have defined limits to this practice, for, except in the rudest ages, the figure itself was never painted, although it appears to have been sometimes covered with an encaustic varnish. The naked marble of the works of the greatest sculptors was not coloured ; the colouring was 'confined to the lips, the eyes, the hair, the drapery, and the ornaments of the dress.
At the present day polychromy in architec ture is advocated by many persons of taste. The encaustic painting of some of our interi ors and the gorgeous splendour of the new House of Lords, are examples. The much discussed choice of colours by Mr. Owen Jones in the Palace of Industry bears on the subject of polychromic decoration.