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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
3 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. 41
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