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Arrowsmith, Henry William / The house decorator and painter's guide; containing a series of designs for decorating apartments, suited to the various styles of architecture
(1840)

Interior decoration,   pp. [1]-3


Page 3


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dart; the posticum was decorated with a zigzag stripe of an opaque or
brownish red; the simas were ornamentally painted as on other monuments
of Grecian architecture, when they were highly enriched with painted deco-
rations, as particularly observed at Selunis and }Egina. The lacunaria, as
usual at other temples of that age, were doubtless decorated with gilding
and colours.
  Some idea may be formed of the attention bestowed by the Greeks on
the decorations of their temples, from the circumstance that sculpture, stucco
painting, rich mosaic, and inlaid marbles, were all used by them in their
decoration.  The sister art of painting    was frequently   united with 
 their
sculpture; for it appears that " low relievos in stucco were used by
the
ancients to give effect to their paintings; and Pliny tells us, that Pandasias
painted the battle of the Centaurs and Lapithm on the shield of thc statue
of Minerva, the bas-relief of which was wrought by Myos: at the same
time, Phidias, the    sculptor, was assisted   by his nephew     Panenus,
the
painter, in finishing that statue, by beautifying it with colours, but chiefly
the drapery."   The sculpture and bas-reliefs, as discovered at the
temple of
AEgina, also certainly partook of those enrichments, having a light blue
ground, and the naked figures distinguished by tints, and their attributes,
armour, and the contiguous shields and inscriptions, sparkling with gilding.
   The fertility of genius in their great sculptor Phidias, who was equally
 skilful in every department .of his art, is truly surprising.          to
have
been employed in the execution of almost
art at this period; and from the number
general inspection of any of them could scai
  of the Torentic
ons, more than a
  When executing
the Minerva of the Parthenon at the Athenian Acropolis, he had already
completed, or was engaged on, besides many other statues and groups in
ivory and gold, five other statues of that goddess, probably all of them
co-
lossal, of which the Minerva Prom~ichus, in bronze, on the Acropolis, must
have been upwards of fifty feet in height, having beenf visible from the
sea.
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