Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/393

CHAPTER X. PAINTING. We have defined the part which colours, laid on with the brush on the woodwork, especially on coatings of plaster, played in the decoration of edifices.^ In order to illustrate our words, we have printed several specimens with purely ornamental designs, composed of straight and curvilinear lines combined in various ways, which served to enliven and heighten the aspect of the floors, walls, and perhaps the ceilings, if not of all the apartments, at least of the principal ones (Figs. 85, 206, 210-216, 229, 242 ; PI. XIII. 2, 3). We have shown that the painter, at the early date when Thera was buried under volcanic ashes, began to be dissatisfied with geometric design alone, and looked for and found variety in leafage and flowers (Figs. 208, 209, 236), as also in certain inferior animals, such as cephalopods, the circular forms and flexible tentacles of which happily combined with those spirals dear to the Mycenian ornamentist (Fig. 237). We also hinted at the bolder flights of the painter ; his earnest efforts to clothe the walls of his reception-rooms with veritable pictures made up of great quadrupeds, including men and gods. If we have engraved rather early in this volume the fresco fragment repre- senting fully equipped warriors alongside of their horses (Fig. 238), it was with a view of enabling the reader to form some idea of the inner aspect of the palace. So scanty a piece of information, however, cannot dispense us from devoting a special study to whatever remains of these pictures, where the painter has emulated the sculptor, and like him attacked the noblest and most complex types of the living form. 1 History of Art,