DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15680#0099
THE WALL-PAINTINGS.
7!)
ments, which spring from each volute and help to divide the spandrels,
are pale yellow; if prolonged they would supply the framework of a
quadruple spiral like that which forms the basis of the Orchomenos ceiling-
pattern. The frieze is bordered by a white stripe, outside which there seems
to have been a red panel.
Comparison with the spirals reconstructed by Mr. Fyfe from fragments of
plaster found at Cnossos1 makes it probable that this type of design was
directly or indirectly derived from Crete.
§ 7.—The Tcchnique of the Melian Wall-jmintings.
I have tried to avoid the word freseo because I believe that these
paintings were executed not in true freseo but in a combination of freseo and
temperet. It was customary to mark off the dividing-lines of the stripes
which bordered the picture or panel by applying a tightened string to the
plaster while it was still wet; but some of the colours have not penetrated
into the plaster, as they should have done if the real freseo process had been
einployed, but lie on the surface and scale off easily ; nor do they resist water
even as well as those on the painted plaster found at Cnossos and elsewhere in
Crete. The paintings described in § 2 have been executed on a mere film of
white limewash laid over an okier painted surface.
Among the miscellancous antiquities brought from Phylakopi to the
Athens Museum is the base of an earthenware jar containing a caked mass of
fine crimson earth of the same colour as the background of the Lily frag-
ments. Dr. O. A. Rhousopoulos, the advising chemist of the Museum at
Athens, has been so kind as to analyse it for me. It consists principally of
Oxide of Iron (Fe.20:!), with which there is present a smaller quantity of
Silica (Si 0„), partly combined with the Oxide of Iron, partly free in the
form of small bright crystals. Mr. Rhousopoulos thinks that this is the
result of an artificial mixture, but it is also possible, I am informed, that the
pigment was obtained from some natural earth containing Silicate of iron, and
that in the course of time through decomposition a part of the silica has
separated itself and formed the crystals.
11. C. Bosaxquet.
1 Journal of IL I.Ii. A. X. (1902), p. 120.
7!)
ments, which spring from each volute and help to divide the spandrels,
are pale yellow; if prolonged they would supply the framework of a
quadruple spiral like that which forms the basis of the Orchomenos ceiling-
pattern. The frieze is bordered by a white stripe, outside which there seems
to have been a red panel.
Comparison with the spirals reconstructed by Mr. Fyfe from fragments of
plaster found at Cnossos1 makes it probable that this type of design was
directly or indirectly derived from Crete.
§ 7.—The Tcchnique of the Melian Wall-jmintings.
I have tried to avoid the word freseo because I believe that these
paintings were executed not in true freseo but in a combination of freseo and
temperet. It was customary to mark off the dividing-lines of the stripes
which bordered the picture or panel by applying a tightened string to the
plaster while it was still wet; but some of the colours have not penetrated
into the plaster, as they should have done if the real freseo process had been
einployed, but lie on the surface and scale off easily ; nor do they resist water
even as well as those on the painted plaster found at Cnossos and elsewhere in
Crete. The paintings described in § 2 have been executed on a mere film of
white limewash laid over an okier painted surface.
Among the miscellancous antiquities brought from Phylakopi to the
Athens Museum is the base of an earthenware jar containing a caked mass of
fine crimson earth of the same colour as the background of the Lily frag-
ments. Dr. O. A. Rhousopoulos, the advising chemist of the Museum at
Athens, has been so kind as to analyse it for me. It consists principally of
Oxide of Iron (Fe.20:!), with which there is present a smaller quantity of
Silica (Si 0„), partly combined with the Oxide of Iron, partly free in the
form of small bright crystals. Mr. Rhousopoulos thinks that this is the
result of an artificial mixture, but it is also possible, I am informed, that the
pigment was obtained from some natural earth containing Silicate of iron, and
that in the course of time through decomposition a part of the silica has
separated itself and formed the crystals.
11. C. Bosaxquet.
1 Journal of IL I.Ii. A. X. (1902), p. 120.