Depth by graphic means-linear perspective, foreshortening, hatching-was mastered by Greek draughtsmen by about the middle of the fifth century B.C., but the first flowering of true painting took place later in that century: only then did painters learn to create modulated color surfaces. There are three categories of techniques for that purpose: the gradation of colors through mixture, overlaying or glazing, and patching. Apparently painters blended their colors in the pigments, in a preparatory and recondite process: custom-blending was unknown. At least Plato, Aristotle and others are strikingly ignorant of basic mixing formulas. Overlaying of colors appears on white-ground lekythoi of the late fifth and early fourth centuries and is first attested in literature in Aristotle (under the terminus technicus rtrrokX, De sensu 44ob). The one color technique widely attested for the later fifth century (and, in fact, often equated with the birth of painting) is the one called or shadow painting. In modern studies the term is rendered as shading, chiaroscuro or as perspective and shadow-effect combined. These interpretations, however, are based mainly on post-Hellenic sources, which reflect only a vague memory of the technique. Examination of ten references in Plato, two in Aristotle and a passage in Pliny, N.H. 35.29, translated from a Classical treatise on colors, shows that the technique featured patches of strongly contrasting colors, which intensified each other when viewed from close-up but blended into luminous effects when seen from the appropriate distance. In other words, skiagraphia was an impressionistic technique, using divisions of bright colors and relying on the phenomenon of optical color fusion. Of the extensive scientific literature produced during the Hellenic age, little remains, but its vestiges show that the Greeks were familiar with optical color fusion, the mutual alteration of contiguous colors and the difference between the additive and the subtractive color systems. The skiagraphia technique was the artistic expression of that knowledge. Between the painted pinakes of Pitsa of about 535 B.C.1 and the frescoes from the Tomb of the Diver at Paestum2 dated at 480 B.C. subtle changes in color technique may be observed: the Pitsa pain er drew his figures in contours and filled in the outlines with flat colors. The Paestum frescoes reveal an attempt to create a certain plasticity of the human figures through the gradation of color (applied to the brown-to-red tones only).' On the best preserved Pitsa tablet six (possibly seven) colors are used, but they are rather arbitrarily applied. The Paestum painter uses five (in addition to the various shades of rusty reds there are white, black, blue, and green) but the bold horizontal strokes of blue, representing the kline cushions against the predominant reds of the banquet scenes, show that the artist is aware of the dramatic effect of color contrast.4 Still, the Paestum paintings are essentially drawings and the approximately contemporary works of Polygnotus, which later ages experienced as archaic,5 were probably very similar in technique, whatever their much disputed 80og may have been. Clearly the art of painting set itself apart, as Pliny put it,6 in the later fifth century, i.e. paint rs learned in some manner or manners to * SPECIAL ABBREVIATIONS Bruno, Form and Color: Vincent J. Bruno, Form and Color in Greek Painting, Diss. Columbia U. 1969 (University Microfilms 70-6942). Chevreul-Birren: M.E. Chevreul, The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors and their Applications to the Arts, transl. from the French, with a special introduction and explanatory notes by Faber Birren, New York, 1967. Gombrich, Illusion: E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, Princeton, 1960. Napoli, Tuffatore: Mario Napoli, La Tomba del Tuffatore, La Scoperta della Grande Pittura Greca, Bari, 1970. Overbeck: J. Overbeck, Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Kiinste bei den Griechen, Leipzig, 1868 (reprint 1959). Pollitt, Terminology: J.J. Pollitt, The Critical Terminology of the Visual Arts in Ancient Greece, Diss. Columbia U. 1963 (University Microfilms 64-3129). 1 Orlandos, EAA s.v. Pitsa, with an illustration after a water color. 2 Napoli, Tutfatore. 3 Napoli, Tubfatore, figs. 5-9. 4 Approximately the same blue is used with good effect for the scarf of the dancing young man on the West wall, Napoli, ibid., fig. 3. 5 Quintilian (12,1o,3) speaks of illa prope rudia ac velut juturae mox artis primordia. Although Pliny calls Polygnotus nobilissimus (34,85) and credits him with innovations (35,58), he says about Apollodorus, who lived in the later fifth century, that he made all earlier painting obsolete (35,60). On the possibility that Polygnotus painted transparencies, see n. 37 infra. s . se ars ipsa distinxit ... N.H. 35,29. The full passage is quoted in the text below. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.105 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 05:00:26 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms