marble was left in its original whiteness. Where the solid coating of red or blue paint was not applied, the marble seems to have been tinted a dull yellow, as by the application of wax to the surface, which wax, if melted on with hot irons, would act as a preservative for the marble. It appears then that all modern dreams about the whiteness and purity and abstract loveliness of the Grecian temples are mistaken. Browning’s Artemis says that, always excepting Hera, she is the equal of any goddess of them all—
“. . . . surpassed
By none whose temples whiten this the world.”
The Artemis of any Greek poet would have used a different phrase: to her, the temples erected to the gods of Olympus would not have seemed white objects—they would have been to her the properly sacrificial and devotional embodiment of all that was splendid and gorgeous in the arts of men at that time: sculptured marble and wrought metal indeed, but also color and gold freely and even lavishly applied. [Plate IV] is a photograph of the restored model of the Parthenon which belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the restoration of which, and the whole work, is due to Charles Chipiez, a well-known and very competent archæologist in the direction of classical architecture. But this restoration is extremely reserved and quiet; it assumes almost nothing; it is restrained quite beyond what is to be expected of a modern enthusiast in Greek art. If, instead of this, we were to study the careful and conscientious drawings published by that French student who has made a special study of the buildings in Epidauros (Alphonse de Frasse) or in Olympia (Victor Laloux) we should find the decoration by means of painting and by the application of golden shields or other members in gilt metal, assumed as very much more elaborate and rich. Thus the restored façade of the temple of Asclepios at Epidauros and that of the temple of Zeus at Olympia are shown as having been painted in the most elaborate way, with figure subjects of conventionalized form and distribution on all the larger flat surfaces, and patterns of leafage and scroll-work on the small ones. It is known that very rich mosaic floors existed in many of these cases and known also that the ceilings, such as those above the open galleries (pteroma) behind the great colonnades, were adorned very richly, sometimes with painted and gilded terra cotta.
There is still to be considered the sculptured ornament, painted, indeed, in vivid colors, but also planned with care, and executed with vast knowledge, minute skill, and what seems to us faultless good taste. In the Doric temples there was no leaf-sculpture, no scroll-work, no carved ornaments of any sort: we shall find a different condition of things in the Ionic style, but even in the elaborate and very costly Parthenon there were only the human and animal forms, expressed in statues and reliefs made as perfect as was possible to the artist of the time. Some temples had none of this: others had the metopes of the frieze (see footnote, Entablature) carved with high reliefs: others had reliefs in the great triangular panel of the pediment:[14] others again had this panel filled with statues, standing and seated, forming a group, and expressing some legend of Greek historical and religious life. Finally, there are instances of long unbroken bands of sculpture in very low relief. The Parthenon had all of these: a horizontal band along the top of each wall of the naos filled with bas-reliefs; high reliefs in the metopes, statues in both pediments.
If, then, our opinion of ancient Greek architecture is to be formed, and a relative judgment of any two fine specimens of it is to be reached, we have to study with some care what is known about their appearance and character when intact. What statues did they have? What high reliefs in square panels, or bas-reliefs in long and narrow strips? Of what value were these sculptures to the general effect of the structure? What seem to have been the proportions of the building? If we can call up an image of it before the mind, is this an image of perfect proportion, or is it clear that greater height or other change in dimension would have been an advantage? It is true that we generally accept Greek buildings of the best time as faultless: but it is also true that there were great differences among them. The hexastyle temple is necessarily more high and more narrow than the octastyle building. If we consider that the temple with six columns at each end has only thirteen on each side (that is, eleven without counting the corner columns which form part of the two fronts) while the wider Parthenon has seventeen columns on each side, we find that the comparative height of the temple of Poseidon at Pæstum, or of Zeus at Olympia, or of Athena at Sunion, is very much greater when seen from one corner, in perspective, than that of the Athens temple. Suppose that we trace from [Plate IV] so much of the colonnade as will leave out two of the end columns and four of those on the flank, and then put a corresponding pediment and entablature, which proportion shall we prefer? Which building is nearer to perfection? The Parthenon, as the very flower and glory of Greece? If so, why was the hexastyle form so very much more common? There are no other octastyle Doric temples known to us: and, if it be said as an explanation, that of course the heights of column and entablature would be varied for the change from the 8 × 17 peristyle to the 6 × 13 type, the question still remains for us—was it practicable to make an octastyle temple as perfect in proportion as were numerous hexastyle examples, large and small, scattered over Greece, Southern Italy and Sicily? These doubts are suggested in order that the reader may see in this commencement of his studies what kind of unsettled and never to be settled questions will come before him at every step of his inquiry. He will be equally uncertain whether he is to prefer the east end of Reims cathedral or that of Bourges, or that of Paris. As with the important Greek temples, so the Gothic cathedrals just named are the very flower of their epoch and represent in the highest perfection known to us their respective styles. So much the student will be able to discover without too great a mental effort: and once sure of this he will understand that no further mental effort in this direction is even desirable, and that comparison among works of very high excellence can never cease—can never be brought to an end by any authority or any outside decision whatsoever, and that here the student’s own preferences must be perforce his only guide.