e., not graded or shaded.
This polychromatic character of Greek marble sculpture is at
variance with what we moderns have been accustomed to since the
Renaissance. By practice and theory we have been taught that
sculpture and painting are entirely distinct arts. And in the
austere renunciation by sculpture of all color there has even
been seen a special distinction, a claim to precedence in the
hierarchy of the arts. The Greeks had no such idea. The sculpture
of the older nations about them was polychromatic; their own early
sculpture in wood and coarse stone was almost necessarily so;
their architecture, with which sculpture was often associated, was
so likewise. The coloring of marble sculpture, then, was a natural
result of the influences by which that sculpture was molded. And,
of course, the Greek eye took pleasure in the combination of form
and color, and presumably would have found pure white figures like
ours dull and cold. We are better circumstanced for judging Greek
taste in this matter than in the matter of colored architecture,
for we possess Greek sculptures which have kept their coloring
almost intact.
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