DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68796#0147
chap, i The colouring of Sculpture 127
good deal of that crude realism which marks the infancy of
representative art. The flesh is coloured up to correspond
with nature, the flesh of women being tinted a lighter hue
than that of men, the eyes are represented often by some
special material, the drapery is painted. The earliest
statues of the Gods in Greece were of a similar kind, only
ruder and more childish in their realism than those of Egypt.
The wooden doll (called xoanon) was made as lifelike as
possible by being dressed up in real clothes with a wig of
hair, and with accessories or arms in actual metalwork
and jewelry. However barbaric such productions may have
appeared in the eyes of later generations, they were as we
have seen (§ 32), highly honoured from a religious point of
view, and they left a deep mark on sculpture in its after
development. The free-standing or seated statue in gold-
and-ivory, in marble, or in bronze, appeared then as the
lineal successor of the clothed or painted wooden figures,
and the inlays of the first, the tinting of the marble, the
partial incrustations of the bronze, were survivals which
perpetuated the old traditions founded on the crudest
realism. In the first case, though the wooden doll re-
mained, the clothes and wig disappeared with the painting
on the face, and ivory was adopted for the flesh, as the
lighter portion, and gold for the darker hair and for the
vesture, the two materials being employed merely as inlays
upon the original structure, or doll, of wood. In early
stone figures colouring was applied throughout, but special
points such as the borders of drapery, the hair, eyes and
lips, were picked out in more forcible tints which remain
in some cases distinct to this day, as in the archaic figures
recentlyfound on .he Athenian Acropolis—excellent examples
of the style of work prevailing before the Persian invasion.1
1 Coloured illustrations in Antike Denkmaler, Berlin, 1889, Bd. i.
Taf. 19, 30.
good deal of that crude realism which marks the infancy of
representative art. The flesh is coloured up to correspond
with nature, the flesh of women being tinted a lighter hue
than that of men, the eyes are represented often by some
special material, the drapery is painted. The earliest
statues of the Gods in Greece were of a similar kind, only
ruder and more childish in their realism than those of Egypt.
The wooden doll (called xoanon) was made as lifelike as
possible by being dressed up in real clothes with a wig of
hair, and with accessories or arms in actual metalwork
and jewelry. However barbaric such productions may have
appeared in the eyes of later generations, they were as we
have seen (§ 32), highly honoured from a religious point of
view, and they left a deep mark on sculpture in its after
development. The free-standing or seated statue in gold-
and-ivory, in marble, or in bronze, appeared then as the
lineal successor of the clothed or painted wooden figures,
and the inlays of the first, the tinting of the marble, the
partial incrustations of the bronze, were survivals which
perpetuated the old traditions founded on the crudest
realism. In the first case, though the wooden doll re-
mained, the clothes and wig disappeared with the painting
on the face, and ivory was adopted for the flesh, as the
lighter portion, and gold for the darker hair and for the
vesture, the two materials being employed merely as inlays
upon the original structure, or doll, of wood. In early
stone figures colouring was applied throughout, but special
points such as the borders of drapery, the hair, eyes and
lips, were picked out in more forcible tints which remain
in some cases distinct to this day, as in the archaic figures
recentlyfound on .he Athenian Acropolis—excellent examples
of the style of work prevailing before the Persian invasion.1
1 Coloured illustrations in Antike Denkmaler, Berlin, 1889, Bd. i.
Taf. 19, 30.