The colour of the background of some of the pediments of the Greek
temples is known to have been blue, and if we admit that the bodies of
the figures were painted at all, it could have been no other colours.
The flesh colour being necessarily some kind of red, would have been
injured by a red ground, while yellow would have advanced to the eye,
and can form a background only to white, the only colour more advancing
than itself. I believe, and it is generally accepted as proven, that the
ground was blue; and as there are many who stop here, admitting the blue
ground, but denying the colouring of the figures, a portion of the
frieze has been left in this stage, to enable them to form a judgment
upon it.